


A Beautiful Dream

by Anima Nightmate (faithhope)



Series: All For One and, well, you know the rest... [5]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Humor, Awkward Conversations, Cheating, Chess, Come Swallowing, Confessions, Confrontations, Consensual, Cunnilingus, Dominance, Eating, Enthusiastic Consent, Exhibitionism, Explicit Consent, F/M, Fellatio, Food, Frottage, Fuck Drunk, Fugue, Imagination, Internal Conflict, Kissing, M/M, Manual Dexterity, Masturbation, Minor Original Character(s), Multi, Multiple Orgasms, Multiple Partners, Mutual Masturbation, Panic Attacks, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Rimming, Submission, Tenderness, Tension, Threesome, Threesome - F/M/M, Vaginal Fingering, Verbal Dominance, Wine, argument, this is definitely not a terrible idea all right?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-19
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-04 11:18:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 26,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14019126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faithhope/pseuds/Anima%20Nightmate
Summary: The previous works have brought us to this pass - d’Artagnan has been having an affair with Athos, and has recently renewed his affair with Constance, after they declared their love for each other, with Athos’s blessing. Except that Constance doesn’t know. Yet.Expect angst from pretty much the get-go and maybe… justmaybe… some kind of resolution…





	1. Summons

“Here you are.”

“Thank you.”

“My pleasure, captain.”

“I - I’m just a Musketeer.”

“Oh.”

And off he goes. He wonders briefly how the man would have responded if he’d known he was talking to the former Comte de la Fère and, shaking his head gently and smiling, he turns to the door, moves close.

And pauses.

_Well, this looks familiar._

He shakes his head again, no longer smiling, and reaches up.

*  * *

Constance awakens deliciously slowly. The sun is coming strong through the window and she feels… what was it that poet said last week…? Languorous. She feels _languorous_. Each breath she takes fills her with… light? Why not?

Her entire body is smiling, she thinks. And then she realises that she can’t remember the last time she had literally nothing to do. She stretches, feeling the sheet as a delicious kind of weight on her, and, just as slowly, opens her eyes, cautious against the sunlight.

And there he is. Blurred, dishevelled in surely hastily donned breeches and loose shirt. He is standing by the outer door of this ridiculously large place, talking in a low voice. Hmm. That must be what wakened her, how embarrassing. And her smile swells to remind her that there is no shame to be found here, although she does wish that he’d shut the inner door between the bedroom and reception room. And then memories of the previous night start to make themselves more explicitly insistent; her eyes shutter, heat wells through her, and her next stretch is a gentle, full-body ripple.

She opens her eyes again - he is still discussing _something_ with whoever is at the door. A tiny frown creases her sunny smoothness. One of his arms is bent up and forward at the elbow, and she can imagine, from the movements of his back, his open-palmed reasoning, so sweetly familiar to her. And now he backs, bringing whoever it is in with him, shutting the outer door to.

It’s Athos. Oh. Must be a message from the garrison. Well, that’s serious enough to forget _languor_. D’Artagnan casts a single look back towards the bed, but clearly can’t see that her eyes are actually open.

Athos’s right hand lands on his shoulder. From what she can see of his expression, he’s clearly regretful. D’Artagnan’s right hand comes up and he places it in the centre of Athos’s chest. They are silent for a long moment. And then.

She blinks rapidly, certain she’s seeing this wrong. Their heads come together once, briefly, then again, and.

And yes.

They’re kissing. Slowly. Certainly.

This.

This isn’t the first time. It can’t be. Athos’s fingers look to be tightening on his shoulder, then slide to his neck. She. She knows exactly how

And they’re breaking off, shaking heads, and they look towards her, frowns of dismay creasing them and they still can’t see she’s. Oh God.

Oh God.

Her lips tingle with the kind of cold she associates with shock, but more troubling to her sensibilities is the way the rest of her body is responding. Heat is flooding her core, her skin becomes increasingly sensitive.

_Why not? They’re both very attractive men._

Oh, will you be quiet?

_Imagine them together._

No.

Her nipples feel almost heavy with 

No.

 _Hard muscle and all that strength_.

Oh my _God_ , you can’t.

_I can._

_You can._

She bites her lip, fights her urge to put her hand to herself. She loses focus on the colloquy and misses the moment when Athos leaves, only breaking out of her mental images when the soft sound of the door shutting cuts across the rooms. She looks up to see that d’Artagnan is already heading over to the bed.

He smiles so openly, so lovingly, that she almost believes that what she saw was a dream.

“Hello, my love,” he says.

“Mmmh,” she says, rolling towards him. “Do you have to go?” Her voice is still thick.

His smile drops to rueful. “I’m so sorry. Treville has sent for me.”

“Treville was here?”

He shakes his head, laughs, but now she knows there’s something to be looking for, she can see the dark space behind his humour. “No: Athos. Treville may not be our official captain any more, but he still wouldn’t run his own errands for someone like me.”

She frowns, starts to sit up, leaving the sheet draped over her shoulder. “You do yourself a disservice.”

He pulls a face at her; he’s still uncomfortable with this, with being… _favoured_ , even though, when he stops thinking about it, he leaps into himself like he was born to adventure, to command, to be…

To be everything he can be.

Am I so very different?

“Will you be gone long?”

His eyebrows crease up in the middle again. “I honestly don’t know. They want to talk about yesterday, about what could have gone better.” He sighs. “I hope they’ll also talk about what went well! Besides,” he adds, “will your duties not…?”

“Oh,” she says, warming a little, “The Queen’s note last night…”

A slow slant of smile grows on him again, having suppressed his curiosity for politeness’ sake the previous night.

“Short version?” she says, rushing on, “is that the Queen has allowed me discretionary leave of absence until I should be ‘recovered from my distress of the day’.”

“Constance,” he says, wondering, grinning, “are you _blushing?_ ”

“So what if I am?” she says, crossly. “My mistress has ever-so-discreetly given me leave to fuck you for as long as I like today, or even into tomorrow.”

The look on his face is too much for her. Delight, surprise, shock, and embarrassment flame in a twist across him and, despite everything, she finds herself reaching across to cup his cheek and kiss him on the mouth, drawing back when he starts to lean in and deepen it. She watches his eyes open on a kind of disappointment, and it is only one of the several cuts slicing across her right now.

“You have to go,” she says, softly, but very firmly. “And,” a little louder, faster, “I have to work out what to do with my day of leisure, though I’m blessed if I know what one is, really.”

_Now get up, show him what he’s missing._

Hush.

_Why not?_

Because this is not a game.

_Then… why are you lying to him?_

I’m… not…?

Oh God.

He must see some of this in her, because his expression drops into concern. “Are you all right?”

She opens her mouth, closes it, takes another breath, then says, simply: “I’ll miss you.”

“Oh.” He reaches to her face. “And I you.”

“You’ll be busy.”

“Still.”

“And all your brothers around you.”

Is it only Athos? Or are you so intimate with the others? Oh God.

_That’s some fertile imagination there._

Shut. Up.

“They’re not you,” he says, very simply, in his turn.

And she.

She believes him.

Surrounded by liars, fawners, and flatterers, she knows that here is someone who is telling her the truth. And not at the same time.

What else has he lied about?

_You know the answer to this._

She is pacing the room after his leavetaking, wrapped in a bedgown and shawl despite the day’s growing heat, grappling with herself and not yet winning.

_Do you want to win?_

Ugh! What kind of question is _that?!_

_What does winning mean here, anyway?_

Are you a demon? Are you…?

_I’m you, Constance. You know that fine well. Stop being childish._

She feels childish. She wants to weep, and to throw things, and, and to shoot something, and to smash something, and to stamp her feet, and… and…

_You’re hungry._

What? Oh. Oh, right. Taking the advice she’d give any other person in the same situation, she washes her face and hands, puts on ordinary clothes, and leaves her apartments in search of food and drink.

And then: answers.

_And then answers._


	2. Awakening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which some answers to questions unasked are found, in some unexpected places.

Once dressed, she feels somewhat more brisk, and makes her way to the kitchens, where she’s able to swap jokes with Maurice and smile some bacon, bread, and butter from Heloise. Here some of her relaxes, and she finds - as predicted - that her heart and brain race less as she suspends herself in the simple pleasure of satisfying her hunger. The chatter of the kitchen staff laps her around, and she can dive in - or not - as required. She learns several surprising things, and furnishes, in return, a bare outline of yesterday’s events, which have already, she discovers, expanded into black magic rites and people coming back from the dead, which she supposes is something to do with Aramis’s narrow escape.

When Simone and Nanette head out to start clearing out the breakfast room, she offers to help. They joke that she’s trying to get herself demoted, that she’s trying to steal their jobs; she retorts that she’s merely going with them as a pretext to steal preserves and cheese. Heloise chases them out and up they go.

Still laughing, Simone pushes into the room backwards, hands full of tray. Head turned over her shoulder, she pauses.

“Are you stuck?” sniggers Nanette.

Simone makes a face. “It’s _her_ ,” she whispers loudly.

“Ugh!” mutters Nanette. “What’s _she_ doing here?!”

Constance frowns. “Who?”

“That witch,” says Nanette, still disgusted.

“Hush!” says Simone. “You mustn’t joke about these things!” And she balances the tray with one arm across it so she can cross herself hurriedly with the other, still wedged halfway through the door

“Oh, hell,” says Constance. “Don’t worry - I’ll get rid of her.”

They shuffle about awkwardly, with Constance pulling faces to give the others something to giggle about while she girds herself “You know what they say,” she tells them, hand on the heavy door.

“What, Madame?”

“The Devil hates being laughed at. Don’t forget it.”

Simone crosses herself again, but she and Nanette both look bolstered.

“Two minutes,” says Constance, “then you come in anyway, got it?”

“Yes, Madame.”

“And I’m Constance.”

“Yes, er, Constance.”

She makes another face at them and pushes through.

Milady is holding a plate piled with leftover meats, breads, and cheeses. She is eating fast and with a look of barely contained fury on her face, standing in a corner near the other door. “Oh,” she says, slightly muffled, “it’s you.”

“Are you yet here, Milady?”

Milady clears her mouth and her lips relax into a sneer. “Why, Constance,” she says, “one does quite forget your quaint country ways until you give yourself away with phrases like that.”

“Have you quite finished?” Milady opens her mouth to reply. “Sorry, I meant: you are quite finished.”

The fury clenches Milady’s features again. “And it comes to this,” she says, “humiliated by a little thing like you. Tell me, Constance, how does it feel to just wait and have things fall to you? The protection of marksmen, the patronage of royalty.”

“These things may have come by good chance, but I’ve worked to keep them.”

“Mmmh. And will you work to free yourself of your embarrassment of a husband, or will you just wait for him to die? Pity you didn’t think to marry someone a lot older - they can be ever so conveniently frail.”

“A pity that I’m not as immoral as you? As vicious as you? No, I don’t think I’m fated to your kind of path, Milady.”

The other gives a short laugh. “There is no Fate, did you not learn that yesterday? Only chance, and those strong enough to take it.”

“What about just desserts?” She can hear her voice start to shake and she hates it.

“What about them? There’s hunger, and the answering of that, and the desire to never be hungry again. Justice belongs with the strongest, and you’d better hope their morals are as deep as their coffers, as strong as their great walls. Let me tell you something - my loving husband’s loving brother tried to rape me. Where I’m from…” she pauses, then shrugs like she no longer cares what Constance thinks. “Where I’m from, someone tries to take something from you, you’re allowed to defend it, and yourself. There are reparations to be taken.” She shakes her head, bitterly amused and furious. “But in answering my attacker the way I was raised I killed him. And my loving husband strung me up to die.”

“And yet here you are,” says Constance.

“Yes. Because I took the one chance to me, after it was clear that O- that _Athos_ would never yield.” She stares Constance in the eye. “I’ll tell you something, sweet Constance - these people are savages. They’ve never known real hunger, real danger, and as soon as anything threatens even the slightest of their privileges, they lay waste to everything around them.”

She puts down her plate and sways over to Constance. “And I see you, one of a handful of women in Paris, maybe France, who have the wit and spirit to match mine, and I see you wasting it.”

“Wasting it?” Milady is close now. Close enough to feel her breath, the heat of her body. She feels something of her own heat start to answer; hates it, but lets it.

“Dragged here and there by the whim of men. Crawling after our milksop Queen, and…” she stops, astonished, as Constance’s hand shoots out and seizes the front of her gown and pulls.

“Be very careful what you say to me about her, _dearest_ Milady, especially today.”

Milady’s exquisite eyebrows rise. “Well, Constance…” she murmurs, but there’s the tiniest tremor in her voice, and colour is mounting in her neck.

_Act fast. She’s stronger than you but still surprised._

Constance’s other hand seizes the woman by the back of her neck and draws her even closer.

I don’t think she _is_ stronger. I think she’s just bolder.

She murmurs in Milady’s left ear: “The next time I find you in some dark corner here in this building, where my influence is greater than you could _possibly_ imagine, I’ll show you just how sweet I can be, and believe me - I’m always ready to share a really bad day.” And then she turns her head and kisses Milady’s cheek, very softly, letting her go on the same breath, taking two steps back.

“You can come in now!” she calls over her shoulder. “We’re done here!” She turns to Milady. “We’re done here, right?”

Milady’s left hand is halfway to her reddening cheek, but Constance also notices that her right is at her waist, where she’s willing to bet that something sharp is waiting.

“Oh, we’re done, Constance. For now.” She turns to the nearer door. “Decide what you want,” she calls, “and take it if you can!” And she’s gone.

She always has to have the last bloody word.

“Are you all right, Madame?” asks Simone, breathlessly.

She turns with a smile. “Of course. And please call me Constance.”

“Oh!” says Simone with a flap of her hand. Constance helps them load the big trays, then heads away towards the Queen’s apartments.

But here she’s met with another surprise.

“Gone… riding…?” she asks, flatly astonished.

“Yes, Madame,” says Sofia, gorgeous voice and stately mien indicating a subtle surprise but also something of pride. “She said it was time, Madame, and so she went.”

This is positively loquacious from the one member of staff Constance has failed to draw out. There are all sorts of rumours about Sofia - that she’s a singer of great reknown, if she can be persuaded or surprised into it, that she’s a great poet, that she’s a princess in her own right.

Wrong-footed, Constance summons a smile from somewhere and heads back to her own quarters slowly. From behind her, she’s astonished to hear a voice calling “Mistress! A moment!”

She turns. Sofia is gliding towards her. She stops closer than Constance would have predicted and says: “My princess still has need of you, Mistress. Please do not think she does not.”

A real, if slow and slightly puzzled smile curves over Constance, almost against her volition. “Why do you say this?”

Sofia regards her solemnly for a moment, then says, with soft authority: “You make my mistress happy, as she has not been in a long time. And I think she makes you happy too. I wanted you to be sure to know that there will always be a place for you by her side. And in… her heart.”

Constance feels a wash of cold and then a wash of heat at these last words. But there is nothing in Sofia’s eyes but a steely kind of serenity that’s oddly familiar. Seeing that her message has gone home, she nods, turns and glides back towards the Queen’s rooms.

This really is turning out to be quite the day, she thinks. So far no-one’s tied me up or held a pistol to me, so… Well…

She makes a thoughtful way back towards her chambers, then changes her mind and heads out for a walk in the grounds. Some fresh air seems in order.


	3. Breaking Fast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which more answers are found than were expected, and more questions, for that matter.

“Look, just…”

“If you tell me to calm down again…”

“It’s just…”

“Because that’s a sure-fire way to _not_ calm someone down. You do know that, don’t you…?”

“D’Artagnan.”

He looks at him, sags to a halt. Athos walks over slowly, stands near him, slightly to one side, so as not to overwhelm him. He is trying desperately to work out what he would want in the same situation, but since that would be wine, possibly brandy, he’s now trying to reflect back what d’Artagnan has done for him a couple of times now.

In other words, treat him somewhat like a spooked animal.

He can already see d’Artagnan’s calm reasserting itself, and briefly envies him his resilience.

“All right?”

D’Artagnan nods. They are in Treville’s office, which are still part of his quarters; no-one has suggested that he bed down with the rest of the men. The meeting is over, the representative from the Red Guards, a sensible if distant, unsmiling man, gone, and they have lingered, Athos shutting the door after the others when d’Artagnan caught his eye with a plead of eyebrows. He has watched him pace and flail and fail to make much sense for the past few minutes. This is not the man he knows.

He lets his arm drift out from his body and d’Artagnan reaches out to catch it. He pulls him close, and they stand in a solid embrace until d’Artagnan pulls back.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.”

He takes a deep breath. “I think something’s wrong.”

“In what way?”

“Constance. She… she seemed different when we parted.”

“She was asleep.”

“She woke up.”

“When?”

“I don’t know - when you closed the door, I suppose?”

“Different from what?”

“Before.”

“You mean last night?”

“Yes.”

“Different how?”

“More distant.”

“Well,” and he finds himself clenching a fist, puts it behind his back until he can persuade it to unknot, says: “did she… was it… last night,” curses himself silently, starts again: “Did anything happen last night that might have made her less… happy with you…?”

D’Artagnan’s face holds embarrassment and confusion and something else, his eyes sliding. “I rather got the impression of the opposite, actually.”

“Oh, so. Er, so. It. It…” he looks around the room and settles for: “went well…?”

D’Artagnan clears his throat, head down, colour mounting. “Yes. Um. Very. I think. I thought. Er.”

“Did she, I mean.” He puffs out a slow breath. “Was she…”

“Satisfied?” finishes d’Artagnan. “Yes. I’d definitely say so.”

“How…” Neither of them now seem able to look at the other.

“At least three? I think? Um.”

“You…”

“No - her. Um.”

They stare at each other finally. “Why can’t we… How in God’s name are _we_ not able to talk about this?!” bursts out d’Artagnan.

“Because we never have. Not really…”

“You’re…” he’s frowning, almost accusatory. “You’re very talkative.”

“Eh?”

“For you. I mean: last night and now.”

He feels his mouth slip sideways in a sad sort of smile. “I. Well, it turns out if I don’t tell you what’s in my mind things goes wrong.”

“That’s… that’s fair.”

“So why are you worried?”

“She was - I suppose you’d say she was more pragmatic than passionate this morning.”

“You had to leave. She’s a sensible person.”

“Yes,” says d’Artagnan, mournfully.

He takes a deep breath. “Is there any chance she’s guessed?”

“About… about us?”

“Yes.”

“I. Surely… Oh God…”

“She’s a clever woman; I’ve always said so.”

D’Artagnan stares at him, turns, running his fingers through his hair, returns to stare again.

“I’ve got to tell her, haven’t I?”

“Yes.” And he feels a kind of panic himself. Because. “She has to make a fair, full choice. Like me.” Because her choice might be no, and I fear you’ll never forgive me if you lose her. And I don’t know if we can; if I can. If. Ah, God. And… and she might make you choose and. And God.

I never wanted to hurt you.

“Tonight.”

“Yes.”

“Today.”

“If you want.”

He nods. “I’m scared, Athos.”

“I know.”

D’Artagnan looks at him for a long moment. “It’s still the right thing to do.”

He nods, unable to speak.

D’Artagnan reaches out this time, and Athos comes to him. They hold each other very close, very steady, faces buried in each other’s necks. Then Athos feels his lips move on his skin, holds himself still. The movements become kisses, and he feels his breathing change. They are in Treville’s quarters, in the middle of the morning, and. Oh God.

D’Artagnan’s lips move up his cheek and fuck it, he turns his head to kiss him. He swore he would never get enough of that mouth, and its softness and strength still have enormous power to enchant him.

D’Artagnan breaks back, panting. “Mmmwhat if…?”

“The stairs creak.”

“Good point.”

Their kisses become hurried, heavy; probing and moaning into each other. D’Artagnan’s hands bunch at the small of his back, underneath his doublet, fingers fisting in his shirt. He is cupping d’Artagnan’s jaw, partly because he loves to, but also to try to prevent himself from ranging lower.

Now he breaks back. “This is, ah, a terrible idea.”

“No - this is a f-fantastic idea with terrible… nnh… timing.”

“No, seriously - we have to stop.”

D'Artagnan pushes himself back with main strength and hangs there, hands on Athos’s hips, Athos’s on his shoulders.

“So we’re stopping.”

“Yep. Yep, stopping.”

“You should send a message to the Palace.”

“Yep, that helped.” D’Artagnan peels himself away, starts to rub his right fist with his left palm, notices he’s doing it, stop himself.

Athos frowns at him. “Have you eaten anything today?”

“Er. Oh. No.”

“Right, let’s get you fed, then the difficult stuff.”

“All right. Athos?” They head for the door.

“Yes?”

“Would you do me a favour?”

“Of course. Except tell Constance for you.”

“Very funny.” They head through it. He murmurs: “Will you trim your beard? Please? I was mostly kissing moustache just then.”

“I. Er. All right.”

“Thank you.”

This is turning, thinks Athos, into a strange sort of day.

*  *  *

Constance is waiting for him when he gets to her rooms. She looks… beautiful, of course. But there’s an edge to her that he hadn’t envisaged on the way over. It’s something like nervousness and something like determination, and all like Constance, and then he realises - it is almost exactly like the look she wore when she was about to break with him, and he feels his heart start to race. But then she smiles at him, as she didn’t that time, and he steps forward a half pace. She holds her hands up and he catches them so she can draw him further in before turning to shut the door. She then stands a little distance from him, watching him.

“Are you well, Constance?”

“Quite well, thank you, d’Artagnan.” She seems to remember something and asks: “You?”

“Well, thank you, er.”

“You wanted to see me?” and now her smile is… it’s not one he’s ever seen on her before, and he’s reminded, suddenly and terribly, of Milady.

“Er, yes, I.” Her eyebrows rise: _go on._ “I. I have something to tell you.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. Er. Last night,” and he watches her eyes darken, nearly loses his will to continue, sees himself seducing her with sweetness until they have both forgotten, but. No. “I. I didn’t. Hmm. I may have. Mm. I misled you.”

Her eyebrows go up again. “Go on?” And the steel is a little closer to the surface.

“You asked me a question and I answered truthfully but not wholly.”

“Go on…”

“I. You asked me if I’d been with someone else and I said that I hadn’t been with any woman since you.”

“Right…”

“But.” He takes a couple of breaths. “There has been, er, someone.”

“Someone.”

“I. Yes.”

“Go on.” Then her posture relaxes a little and her face with it. “Go on,” she says, more softly.

He gives a tiny smile. “I. Augh. This is. Difficult to say.”

“I’ll help: you had an affair with someone.”

“Yes.”

“While we were apart.”

“Yes.”

“You loved them?”

A pause. “Yes.”

“Mmh. You love me?”

“Yes.”

“Right.” Her nostrils flare a little, a couple of times and he’s reminded, fleetingly, incongruously, of Athos when he’s about to charge in battle. “Do I know this person?”

“Yes.”

“I see. You have to tell me - I’m not helping you any further.”

He closes his eyes. “I,” realises it’s a coward’s way out, to shut off her reactions, opens them, takes a deep breath, “I was. I have been in. It was… is… Athos.”

Her eyebrows go up. “Athos.”

He nods, small and fast: “Athos.”

Her jaw slides side-to-side briefly like she’s working it loose and her eyes narrow briefly. “You. Have been in a love affair with Athos.”

“Yes.”

“Athos of the King’s Musketeers.”

He closes his eyes briefly. “Yes.”

“Old Stone-face.”

“Er. Yes.”

“Did you pull the stick out of his arse while you were at it?”

“Er.”

Her eyes drift to the side. “Oh my God - that’s why he’s been so… relaxed…”

“Er.”

“I just thought he was getting over Milady, having got rid of her. Hah! But of course…” She focuses back on him. “I want to know, d’Artagnan - how long has this… have _you_ been going on?”

“A, er, a few months.”

She blinks at him. “You. Months. You, er, hid that well! Well, I’ve not been. I mean. And. And he loves you?”

“Yes.”

“You. You’ve _talked_ about this?”

“Yes.”

“ _Athos_ said he loved you?”

“Yes.”

“Bloody hell!” She looks down and to one side, rubs her hands together as though they’re cold, looks up again. “You kiss?”

“Yes.”

“Like lovers.”

“Like… lovers.”

“Anything else?”

“Oh, Constance…”

“Don’t you ‘Oh, Constance’ me!” she snaps, all her anger surfacing in one breath. “I deserve to know, don’t you think?”

“I have been…” he rolls his eyes in recollection, “about as intimate with him as I’ve been with you.”

“Bloody _hell!_ ”

“Er, yes.”

“And… And does anyone else know? I mean: is this one of those ‘Constance is the last to know’ things or…?”

“No. No, no-one knows; you’re the first.”

She paces a small circle, stops, looks up at him. “So why are you telling me this, d’Artagnan? I mean: there are several scenarios - either you’re telling me this to clear the decks and be totally honest because you want me to know everything about your life before we make one together, or you’re doing this to tell me why you can’t be with me. Because you want to be with him. Somehow. Which is it?”

“I want to be totally honest with you.”

“‘But’?”

He looks anguished. And she finds she is terribly angry with him. He’s bringing her this… torn bit of clothing and expecting her to mend it.

“Because there’s a third scenario, isn’t there?”

He looks terrified now. But then… while she watches, somehow, he pulls everything into himself. This is d’Artagnan - on the edge of danger he…

“Constance,” and this, finally, is the voice she recognises, the face she recognises, even as his eyes brim, his head cocked. “I love you. And somehow, for some reason, I love Athos too. And you both love me. I… I would like to find a way for us to… for there to be… I don’t want to lose you!”

“But you don’t want to lose _him_ either.” And she feels her eyes start to prick in turn.

“Yes,” he says, simply.

She shakes her head. “This is… this is too large for my brain.”

“It’s. Well. I. Of course.”

“How long… wait… when did you decide that you wanted this? The both of us, that is.”

He huffs a hard breath out, flattens his lips together as he looks down briefly, then back up. “Last night.”

“Last night before me, or…”

“Before.”

“That’s why you were late.”

“He said you were clever.”

“He was right.” She is breathing hard now, jaw bunching. “And what does he think of this?”

“Well…”

“I mean, you basically tried to throw yourself in front of a bullet for me, told me you loved me in front of, well, a large number of people, most of whom are dead now, of course, but then I went and told you that I loved you, about as publicly as I could without doing it at, at Easter Mass, and then somewhere between that declaration and us being together you… had a little chat with Athos about…”

“I wouldn’t put it that way.”

“Then how, d’Artagnan? Why?”

“Because.” He swallows, clenches his teeth. “Because he’d pushed me away. And then we,” he gestures between them, “and.”

“And what, I was second best? Heat of the moment, worth dying for second best?”

“That’s not it at all! You both! You _both_ turned me away!”

“My husband threatened to have you killed!”

“ _What?!_ ”

“He said I had to end it with you or he’d get the Cardinal to have you killed.”

“I. I never knew!”

“Well. Well, no.” Her eyes go down like she’s furiously searching the floor for something, and her hands wash together. “I had to make it convincing, didn’t I?”

“You didn’t trust me?”

“What?”

“You assumed that… I couldn’t. God-damn it, Constance! How could you make such a decision for us?!”

“That’s! That’s not fair, I was protecting you!”

“I don’t _need_ protecting!” he exclaims, stepping closer to her.

“Yes you do! You! The others! The Muske-bloody-teers. We all”

“All for one…” he says, suddenly quiet.

“Yes…” she says, wrong-footed, deflating.

“And one for all.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means we always have each other’s backs. I’ve always had your back, Constance.”

“And I’ve always had yours.”

“I know. You’ve saved my life so many times.” Somehow, they are holding each other’s hands. “Even, it turns out, when I didn’t know.” And his eyes are brimming again. Oh. Oh, love.

“Did you hate me, d’Artagnan?”

“I. No. Well, a little.”

Her mouth creeps to one side. “I thought so. But then you didn’t. You brought me to the Queen…” and he sees a flush melting upwards in her.

“I have never stopped loving you.”

“And I’ve never stopped loving you. But.”

“But,” he says, looking sad. “ _You_ never took a lover after…”

“Er.”

“ _What?!_ ”

“D’Artagnan… I, er, haven’t been completely honest with you either…” Now it’s her turn to look, well, the way he had earlier, probably.

“But you said…”

“I only said I hadn’t been with Bonacieux…”

“You. You… was this… I mean, you couldn’t be with me because I might be killed - or Bonacieux would kill himself, _apparently_ …”

“D’Artagnan…” her tone was reproachful.

“Sorry.” He breathes like a man schooling himself. “Sorry. Go on.”

“You’ll laugh, really.” Or not…

“What… because this was someone so expendable that it didn’t matter if he got killed… or… oh Jesu.”

“Um.”

“Someone so powerful that that threat would mean nothing.”

“Well.”

“Oh God, Constance.”

“Er.”

“ _Tell me you haven’t been having an affair with Rochefort._ ”

She takes her left hand from his to cover her mouth, bending a little at the waist, nauseous.

“No?”

“No,” she says, swallowing and grimacing.

“Thank God.”

“Actually, it’s quite ironic, considering…” and she rolls her hand towards him. He looks blank.

“What?”

“Well, with you and, um, Athos.”

“Oh. You had an affair with another Musketeer…?” and he looks almost disappointed in her.

“No.”

“No, that wouldn’t.” He shakes his head rapidly, peers at her, anger brimming now. “Tell me.”

“Er. Hah.” She takes a deep breath, abruptly more sympathetic with how he’d been earlier, squints and half turns her face away. “Anne.”

He frowns. She can see him conning through Annes. Then looking horrified. “ _Milady?!_ ”

“Christ, no! The Queen!”

“ _What?!_ ”

She grins mirthlessly. “Yes?”

He shakes his head, looks away, looks back at her. “The _Queen?_ ”

“Yes.”

“So…”

“Yes.”

“You’ve…”

“Yes.”

“With the _Queen…_ ”

“Yes.”

“Like…”

“Whatever you can imagine, d’Artagnan, it’s probably true,” she says, a little wearily.

“Wow.”

“Yes.”

“The Queen.”

“ _Yes_ , d’Artagnan,” she says, eyes rolling, “the Queen, Anne of Austria, the Spanish Queen, the King’s wife, the Queen of France, mother of the Dauphin, yes.”

“In bed.”

“In bed,” she purses her lips, shakes her head slowly, “on a chair, standing up, against a wall, in the bath that one time, er…”

“You don’t need to go on.”

“Are you sure?”

“I… I think I’ve got the picture now.”

She looks down, says, dryly: “Clearly…”

He looks furiously embarrassed, then says: “And is that, I mean… ongoing…?”

“I have no idea,” she confesses.

“What do you mean? Don’t you have a _choice?_ ” He looks a little horrified again.

“No! It’s not like that, it’s not. It’s just lately. I mean… she’s been… not cold, but not…” she looks down, “it all changed a couple of days ago and… I don’t know what she wants and now there’s you, kneeling on the floor of a madman’s stage, and offering your life for mine, and”

“So _I_ was second-best too?”

“Hey!”

“Well…”

And they’re both peering at each other like small, sheepish children, catch each other at it, and laugh. It’s short, but it’s genuine.

“What are we going to do?” she asks.

He shakes his head, still smiling gently. “I have no idea. It’s… I don’t usually make the plans.”

“Hah!”

“What do you want to do?”

She shakes her head in turn. Closes her eyes for a moment. “The thing is: I already told you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

“And you haven’t changed your mind?”

“No.”

“Not even…”

“No, d’Artagnan, not even if you decide to fuck half the garrison, though I’d take it as a kindness if you wouldn’t.”

He chokes on this, laughing. “Where did you _learn_ such language?!”

“You’d be _amazed_ what I’ve picked up, Gascon.”

“Are you going to show me?” And that smile, dear God, that glinting slant she’d walk days for, is back.

“Only if you ask nicely.”

They move closer and he shakes his head gently, gaze locked with hers.

“What?”

“How did I run into such a woman as you, Constance? Was it Fate?”

“No such thing,” she says. “That, or we’re stronger than it.”

Very close now.

_Just reach out and_

Oh, shut up.

They reach out at the same time, right hand on each left cheek, and smile. _Dear God_ , he thinks, _that smile_. Soft as dewfall, they kiss, smile together, melting into an embrace.


	4. Repast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which tardiness is paid for, and words come with difficulty.

“Oh, bloody hell!” says d’Artagnan.

“What?”

They have been sitting together on one of the apartment’s two comfortable chairs, just kissing, for an uncountable amount of time as the sun has turned golden, arcing away across the floor.

She gazes into his wide-open eyes. “What?”

He looks horrified and guilty. “Athos!”

“What… about him…?” She watches his expression. “Oh, bloody hell - he came with you, didn’t he?”

He nods mutely.

“You idiot. Let go of me.” She struggles out of his lap. “Where is he?”

“Er.”

She rolls her eyes, heaves a sigh, brushes down her gown and adjusts her collar. “He’d better not be outside this door.”

“No, no. He said he’d stay with the horses.”

“You are a terrible friend.”

“Yes.”

“Stables or…?”

“Oh, out by the oaks.”

They hurry out to find him sitting with his back to a broad trunk, ankles crossed, hat over his eyes as the horses crop slowly nearby. “Oh no, it’s all right,” he says, without shifting, as they approach breathlessly, “you needn’t rush; I have my…” he tilts his head back, sardonic smile dying, “book…”

“Hello, Athos,” says Constance.

“Hello, Constance,” he says, full of that grave courtesy she knows so well from him.

He keeps his eyes on her while raising an arm and tucking one foot back close to him. D’Artagnan seizes it and his hand locks on; he pushes up to rise and give her a hat-touching nod which edges onto a bow. She returns something similar. She reflects, not for the first time, that she’d rather have one of these utilitarian courtesies that all the flourishes of the court she’s found herself in.

They gaze at one another, wordlessly, for a while, and Constance, who has recently started to be able to quietly outstare people whose families still have their own standing army, instead of filling the air with small talk, takes the time to take in his appearance. She thinks he looks better groomed than the last time she saw him, though, to be fair, he had just walked up a steep hill in the rain having not long finished fighting a fanatic’s blade-wielding minions, so it’s not the fairest comparison. The content she’s spotted on him in other recent encounters is still there, and his stillness is his own rather than indifference, she suspects.

In his turn he reflects, again, that court life is suiting her. It appears so far to have sharpened her rather than spoiling her manners into something arch and unnatural. He is trying hard not to imagine what has given her the glow she wears about her at this moment. It’s not working. He grieves for the still-livid marks about her wrists, and tells himself, again, that being at the fort from the beginning would have likely made far less difference than arriving with an armed troop to tip the balance of chaos in that place. But still.

“What are you reading?” she asks. He’s not sure if it’s simple politeness or genuine interest, so decides to treat it as the latter.

“Metamorphoses.” Her face contracts a little into the subtlest polite puzzlement. “Ovid.” He fishes it out and shows her.

“Latin,” she says, with a small sparkle of humour.

His mouth crunches wryly. “Yes.”

“What’s it about?”

He takes an involuntary glance at d’Artagnan, who’s standing with one arm across him propping the other which curves a finger over his mouth. He addresses her gravely: “Metamorphoses… Transformations throughout ancient history. People change into animals and vice versa. Lovers become part of the landscape. Transformation is escape or punishment or just a vehicle for hubris… My apologies,” he adds, a trifle faster, “I could talk about it for ages.”

“A favourite?”

His eyes break from hers to con over the list. “I suppose so. Of poetry, anyway.”

“It’s poetry? I thought it would be stories.”

“It’s both.”

She smiles then, dimples flashing. “That sounds wonderful.”

And she means it, he thinks, disarmed. He opens his mouth, takes breath to speak, closes it again. He darts another look at d’Artagnan who, he rather suspects, is laughing behind his crooked finger.

“Are you hungry?” she asks.

“Famished.”

“Let’s go then,” she says. “You can leave the beasts in the stable - we’re not going too far.”

“We…”

“We.”

“Right.”

“Wait, where are we going?” says d’Artagnan.

“Out,” she says. “Keep up. And fetch the horses.”

Athos turns a barely-repressed amusement to d’Artagnan, who makes a surreptitious, twinkling, complex moue at him, slips on his gloves, and collects the reins.

*  * *

“Here?”

“Here.”

“You’re serious? _Here?!_ ”

“You’ve become such a snob, d’Artagnan.”

“That is _not_ true. It’s _not!_ ” he says, turning to Athos, who shrugs.

“If Madame likes it…” he drawls.

“Fine. It just looks a lot like that place where they thought I’d murdered one of the other guests.”

“Well, it’s not,” says Constance, crisply. “And I wouldn’t take you there anyway - they have a rat problem.” She pushes her way through the door. “This place has good food, though. And it has the added advantage of being somewhere my husband won’t go.”

“Why’s that?”

“Hates the owner. Feeling’s mutual.”

“Useful,” observes Athos. From beneath his hat’s brim he surveys the place in that half-involuntary way that is such a part of him - nature and disposition of customers; ditto staff; windows, other access points; beam height, light levels, room to swing. The walls and floor are more scarred than the kind of place he’d expect Constance to frequent, but everything else looks fine to him. Beside him, d’Artagnan is doing something similar, but slower, more visibly, head turning.

He wants to tell him everything’s fine, but that would be patronising - d’Artagnan will have to learn the one-glance summing up that came to the rest of them in time. He suspects Porthos developed it earliest of all, but then Porthos often makes a show of checking a place out, bullish look on his face and arms held at ready - that kind of visibility can be useful just… not in a place like. He finds himself distracted by the distant look in d’Artagnan’s eyes, the muscles in the long, turning neck.

Dammit, man.

Eyes flicking around the place, he sees that he’s not the only one paying attention to d’Artagnan. He supposes it’s only to be expected. But still…

He touches his arm with the back of his hand. “Come on,” he murmurs. “Constance has gone that way.”

She’s down in the bar level of the room, chatting to a spare-looking woman whose face is all straight lines which break into delight at something Constance has just said. Shaking her head and chuckling, she waves towards a corner of the room, then strides over and turfs two men off a table there, Constance following in her wake.

Constance looks up over her shoulder, makes a _come on, then_ face and nods sideways towards the table.

They reach the table as Constance is saying “-nks, Adèle, but you didn’t need to go to”

The other woman waves her off. “No trouble, Constance. Always a pleasure to see _you_.” She raises her eyebrows at the pair of them. He nods politely, hand on chest, sees d’Artagnan do the same out of the corner of his eye.

She smiles slightly, her eyes remaining watchful. “You have armed guards now, Constance?”

“These are my friends, Adèle. I wanted to introduce them to your food.”

“Soldiers are always hungry.” She looks them over. “I’ll send bread over directly and the bourguignon…” she checks with Constance, who nods minutely, nods to them all somewhat vaguely and strides off.

Athos takes off his hat and settles himself at the short end of the table, back to the partition. Constance is already settled on the bench with her back to the wall, leaving d’Artagnan to seat himself opposite her.

They all look at each other.

“How did you find this place again?” asks Athos, politely.

“Adèle is some distant cousin to my husband, on the German side of the family.”

“She’s German?”

“No, just that’s what we call that side of the family - they’re all from eastern regions and have German blood.”

“Oh, right.”

“And, er, the food’s good?” asks d’Artagnan.

“Yes. Really good. You’ll like it.”

“He’ll eat anything,” say Athos.

“Apparently so,” she says, then seems to hear what she’s just said, and they all fall silent, looking in different directions.

“Bread, Madame, Monsieurs.”

“Thanks, Sylvie.”

“Water?”

“Yes please.”

“Wine?”

“Yes please.”

“Do you have any small beer?” asks Athos.

“With the bourguignon, Monsieur?” Sylvie looks a little scandalised, and Constance has to smother her grin with her hand.

Athos breathes in deep through his nose, offers one of those slightly cold smiles. “Yes, please.”

“I’ll fetch one. Anything else?” and she directs this at Constance.

“No, thank you. Do you…”

“The slate’s started. Don’t worry about a thing.” With the slightest of disapproving backwards glances, she hurries off.

“Small beer?” asks Constance. Then: “Right. Sorry.”

“Don’t. It’s.” His face is back to the veneer of indifference she’s more used to seeing in him.

D’Artagnan leans forward over his arms, propped on the table. “So why won’t your husband come here?”

“Claimed the owner short-changed him once,” she says, off-hand. “Vowed never to return.”

“His own cousin?”

“Well, distant cousin.”

“I bet she liked that.”

“I think it’s fair to say that she despises him.”

“No wonder.”

“He also doesn’t agree with women owning businesses.”

“Wow.”

“Yes. Listen, could we…”

D’Artagnan mimes tying his lips shut. No-one wants Bonacieux here, it would appear.

Without a ready villain, the silence stretches again, and they all look around the room, as if for inspiration. Athos feels the weight of Metamorphoses in his pocket, and tries to breathe it away. D’Artagnan drums on the table then says, brightly: “Bread?”

“Oh, yes please.”

“Yes. Please.”

Constance catches something passing between them as d’Artagnan tears and hands the bread around. She can barely imagine what it might mean, and starts to feel a kind of anger rising again, looking at d’Artagnan’s flash of eyes, tiny quirk of upper lip ignite a deep spark in Athos, which he smothers quickly with a troubled kind of longing and guilt.

Does d’Artagnan think he’s being subtle, she wonders, or does he simply not care? And Athos, how… She closes her eyes, takes a deeper breath, lets it out. And how, she wonders, eyes open again, did she miss any of this for… months, apparently?

Now she remembers the edges of the panic she’d caught when the King was missing; re-envisages the honed rage and fear in Athos’s stride when she’d seen him moving fast with the rest around the Palace. Of course.

Mind you, she thinks, tearing a morsel from the bread and bringing it to her mouth, would any of them watching have spotted her affair with Anne? The soldiers are permitted only a kind of back-slapping, shoulder-squeezing physical contact that sometimes looks more akin to wrestling than affection, whereas the Queen holding the hand of her trusted servant would be passed over as what? feminine softness? the frailty of women?

She sighs and eats more bread.

“It’s, er, good bread,” says d’Artagnan with a miserable kind of enthusiasm.

“Mmh,” says Athos.

“Wait until you try the bourguignon,” says Constance absently, looking around the room.

Silence, or as close to silence as a tavern like this will allow, sweeps in again.

When the stew arrives, they greet it with a grateful kind of babble. Athos’s small beer arrives as a kind of clattering afterthought.

“They pride themselves on their wine here,” says Constance as the staff depart, and he thinks it’s with a kind of consoling note. He cocks an eyebrow and sips, anyway.

The bourguignon is very good - it has clearly been simmering for hours, if not the whole day, and everything is very tender and flavoursome. D’Artagnan dips bread and all-but inhales the food. The herbs they’ve used are different from what he’s used to, but he recognises farm food translated to a grander scale, and it fills a part of him which emptiness he never notices until, for example, he rides down a country path with the wind high, or hears a lamb bleating.

Athos watches him for a while, fascinated; unable, as ever, to resist smiling when seeing d’Artagnan putting food away like a starving urchin. “Enjoying that?” he asks when d’Artagnan comes up for air.

“Bacon,” says d’Artagnan, “makes everything amazing,” and loads more into himself.

Shaking his head, Athos applies himself to the food, enjoying it without understanding it.

Constance had managed to forget, in the intervening time, what d’Artagnan looks like while eating. He seems to do it with his whole body. That thought inevitably leads to other activities that involve him entire and seamlessly. Kissing, for example and… as she warms, she hopes that the hot food will cover any blush anyone notices.

Food done, they sit back and drink, still in a silence which grows the more awkward until Constance says: “I thought, maybe, we could talk. Away from the Palace or the garrison.”

Athos nods. “Right,” he says, politely.

D’Artagnan nods too, looking momentarily nervous.

“Well then,” she says. “I think what we really need to know is: what does everyone want?”


	5. Proposal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the notion of fair play is explored, along with some of Athos’s charms.

They both look at d’Artagnan, who immediately looks both anxious and some species of guilty, gaze sliding to his empty plate. The muscles in his jaw bunch briefly and he looks up.

“I. I love both of you.” Cold washes through him immediately on hearing it said aloud. He swallows. “I _want_ both of you.” His flying hands land on the table in front of him; voluntarily or otherwise, the left is slightly closer to Athos, the right slightly closer to Constance, who immediately frowns.

“We get that,” she says, somewhat shortly. “But how would that work?”

He cocks his head at her.

“You divide your time between us? We go out together to places like this? We agree who’s going to see whom when in order to keep it fair?”

“I hadn’t thought about it…”

“Hmm,” says Constance. “It’s not going to be easy.”

“And we need to decide what ‘fair’ means,” says Athos, quietly.

D’Artagnan frowns at him, cocking his head the other way.

“Right now we live and work together, and Constance is at the Palace. So we will inevitably spend more time together. But you two can be with each other more openly…”

“It’ll be easier for us to be intimate,” she agrees. “Though I can’t expect my mistress to give me a day’s leave every time we want to be together.”

“What’s this?” asks Athos.

“Oh,” she says, turning towards him, “she… she’s using the excuse of yesterday’s horrors to give me…”

“Time to recover?”

“Yes, essentially.” He notices that she’s reddening slightly.

“Besides,” says d’Artagnan, “she might get jealous.”

“She’s not like that.”

“No? She’s not had a rival for you all this time.”

“That’s not how it works.”

“How does it work, then?”

“I rather think we’re moving off the point.”

“Sorry,” says Athos, “I think I’m missing something.”

“Constance and the Queen,” says d’Artagnan.

“Yes. Her place is at the Queen’s side, but not all day and night.”

“Well…”

“D’Artagnan!”

“I’m _definitely_ missing something.”

“Constance and the Queen,” says d’Artagnan slowly, with some heat, “like you and me.”

“Oh.” A pause. “Oh!”

Constance props her forehead in her hand, covering her eyes. “Well done, d’Artagnan,” she says.

He sits there for a long moment, eyes distant, thinking, among other things: this explains a lot. Also: don’t, for the love of God, let Aramis know.

“How on Earth did you keep _that_ quiet?” he asks, at last.

“Who knows?” she says wearily, looking up. “I would be _astonished_ if Sofia didn’t know, but then getting two words out of her at the best of times is a calendar-worthy feat. Rochefort seemed suspicious that she was happier than usual, but I think I’ve diverted him.”

The two men look immediately concerned.

“It’s all right!” she says. “You know how he is - if he had the slightest suspicion he’d have had me put in the Bastille or killed by now.”

“That… doesn’t make us less worried,” says d’Artagnan, slowly, head flicking to Athos and back.

“Well, there it is,” she says. “And, as I said, somewhat beside the point. Oh, what are they doing now?”

She can hear tables being pulled to one side near the bar, and drinkers being shooed.

“Entertainment?” guessed Athos, leaning out to see.

Constance chewed her lip. “That still gives us some time to talk. So: what are we going to do?”

Athos has been thinking. “Is this something that needs to be formalised right away?”

“It does seem a bit premature,” agrees d’Artagnan.

“You realise why I think it’s important to talk about this, don’t you?”

“Yes, but it’s not like you and I had a contract before, or you had one with the Queen.”

“Oh, Mother of God, will you _stop going on about that!_ ” she says through gritted teeth.

Everyone just sits and breathes for a moment, Constance looking around the room, d’Artagnan looking at his fingers on the edge of the table. Athos slouches back, tries not to, does anyway, takes a sip of his drink.

“Sorry,” says d’Artagnan.

She nods curtly, possibly not trusting her voice yet. Sylvie comes to clear their plates away, asking whether they enjoyed it, and whether they want any more wine or _anything else_. She has entirely failed to encompass Athos in her gaze throughout this procedure.

“More wine, please,” says Constance.

“And you, monsieurs?”

“Yes please,” says d’Artagnan.

“Yes please,” says Athos. D’Artagnan frowns at him. He ignores him.

Sylvie raises an eyebrow towards him. “Monsieur?”

“Whatever you would recommend.”

“Monsieur,” and finally looks at him.

He gives her one of his nicer smiles. “I trust your judgement.”

She nods and departs, clattering, thawing.

The others look at him. “What?”

“Were you flirting with her?”

He frowns at d’Artagnan. “That. No. What?”

“If he were,” says Constance, “would it be a problem?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you have me, and…”

“So how would it be if he started to see someone else?”

“It just seems more fair if…”

“Excuse me?”

They look at him.

“Assuming I would want someone else.”

“Do you?”

“No. Not. No.”

“Also, he is technically married still,” explains d’Artagnan.

“ _Technically_ ,” says Athos icily, “Anne, Comtesse de la Fère, is dead. And I _am_ here,” he adds, then wishes he hasn’t.

“Sorry.”

Athos nods, jaw set.

“Oh, hell,” says Constance.

“What is it?” 

“Just… promise me you won’t start anything.”

“Start anything?” 

“Yes, Athos, or even finish it.” 

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You’re trained soldiers,” she explains. “I don’t need any mayhem, so just, if something happens, walk away.”

“‘Mayhem’?” says Athos. 

“Walk away?” says D’Artagnan, twisting about in his seat. 

“Who is it?”

“No-one.” They stare at her. “No-one you know, just…” she sighs, “one of those eye contact guys.” They continue to stare. “No,” she says, wearily, “of course you don’t know - why would you… No, don’t!” this last to d’Artagnan, who is still looking.

“Him?”

“Ugh. Yes.” 

“He doesn’t really look your type,” drawls Athos.

“Promise me you won’t do anything… violent.”

“Me?”

“Either of you.” 

“Fine.” 

“Yes.”

“Anyway,” she says, firmly, “where were we?” 

“With my imaginary lover,” says Athos, dryly.

“Here she comes again,” says d’Artagnan. Athos glares at him, then smiles politely at Sylvie as she deposits a fresh cup in front of him, pours wine for the others, and leaves.

“All right,” says Athos, “say I find myself attracted to someone else who is willing to share me with d’Artagnan. What then?”

The others look at each other, then at him. “That would be… fair…” says d’Artagnan, his eyebrows up in the middle, mouth small.

“But you wouldn’t be happy.”

“I. Well. If they made you happy…”

They sit in a miserable kind of silence. Athos puts his nose to the wine and, with a pleased kind of surprise, takes a sip. He looks at Constance, whose mouth goes to one side. She says: “Told you.”

He smiles at her, watches hers answer it, dimples deepening. Her forearms are propped on the table, as are d’Artagnan’s. Their fingertips are almost - but not quite - touching. He knows that he could reach out; it wouldn’t be far, just.

_Just reach out._

Shut up.

Constance looks up at d’Artagnan, then over his shoulder. Her expression drops. “Oh, Lord, he’s coming over.”

Athos slouches back again, all-but glowers into his cup as the man strolls up.

He stands behind d’Artagnan and looks between the other two. Constance catches his eye and curses herself.

“So,” he says, with what can only be described as a leer, “how much, then?” 

Well, she thinks, if only this were a first. She looks over at the others who are looking at her like: _you told us not to fight…_ If pressed, she would say that they’re smirking.

“How much what, Monsieur?” 

He puts his hands on the back of d’Artagnan’s chair and leans forward. “How much for, you know…?”

She sighs. “Listen, Monsieur…” Neither of the others seem willing to help her with so much as a word. Bloody typical. “I don’t…”

“You know,” he says, a small amount of pleading coming into his voice and face. “How much for an hour with this one?” as he claps hands on d’Artagnan.

D’Artagnan’s eyes go wide, and he freezes, fairly effectively pinned. A small amount of Athos’s mouthful of wine escapes. He tries to swallow the rest, chokes briefly, wiping his beard, and puts his head down on the table, shoulders shaking.

Constance swallows her own grin and looks up at the man, who appears to be squeezing d’Artagnan’s shoulders rhythmically. “Er,” says d’Artagnan, head starting to turn.

“I’m sorry, Monsieur,” says Constance, “but he’s not available.”

“Yes,” says Athos, his head coming up to face the man with all his usual impervious mien. “We’ve booked him for the night.”

“Comes highly recommended,” adds Constance, brightly.

D’Artagnan is glaring at them like: _there is going to be trouble for this_.

They look at each other, then at him like: _Oh really?_

“Where from?”

“Oh,” says Athos, “that new little place on, you know,” he turns to Constance, “the one near the theatre.”

“Expensive, mind,” sighs Constance.

“Discretion forbids…” murmurs Athos.

D’Artagnan is shaking his head gently, eyes on the table. Among other things, he’s wondering when - if ever - he’ll be allowed to forget this.

As the disappointed swain departs, he says: “I suppose it was inevitable that you two gang up on me…”

Constance’s eyes narrow and Athos’s smile fades. He reviews his sentence. “And I sound like a sulky child.”

“Yep,” says Constance. “You’re getting the drinks in. Go on.”

Just as he stands, there is a cheer. They all peer down to where the tables have been cleared, Constance standing and leaning over the table in an apparently futile attempt to do so, and, sure enough, a lutanist is set to strike up, along with a tabor player. D’Artagnan pauses, looks back at the others, who shrug. He sits back down again, sideways on the bench, leaning out to see the musicians.

After a while he turns back. “They’re very good.”

“What’s that?”

“They’re good.”

“Yeah,” says Constance. She looks towards Athos. “How’s the wine?”

“It’s good.” _You don’t need another._ I know. _Just. Don’t, all right?_ Hush.

“Is it the same as we had?”

“I don’t know.” He pulls d’Artagnan’s cup towards him, sniffs, pushes it back. “No.”

“What’s the difference?”

He looks at her, expressionless, pulls d’Artagnan’s cup to him again, takes a small sip, considers it, swallows, coughs, says: “About five years.”

“Oh.”

He takes a sip of his own. “Maybe more.”

“Ah.”

“Listen, Athos,” she starts, and there’s a roar from the crowd. “What’s happening?” she calls to d’Artagnan.

“What?”

“What’s. Happening.”

“Dancer.”

Athos leans out. A woman with a wealth of dark curls as far as her waist has stepped out and is starting to dance in the Spanish fashion. Her skin is a shade more golden than d’Artagnan’s, and this is reflected everywhere in glints of golden threads and pins in her clothes and hair. She whirls with a snap of fingers and a flash of eyes and teeth.

She is of a very particular type of beauty - one that always troubles him, and he knows why but won’t say. She is taller, he thinks, and her eyes, from this distance, seem darker. But she is a wild-haired, hard-edged, self-assured woman like a force of nature, and they will always touch a corner of sadness and something like a fear of falling in him. He looks at d’Artagnan and wonders if, without at least a little fear, there can be passion. D’Artagnan looks over to Constance and laughs at her expression of frustration, stands, holds his hands out to her, and she takes them and scrambles, chuckling, over the table to stand by him. They watch the musicians and dancer, and Athos sees them start to sway together and feels that same whirl of feelings that have haunted him all along rise, hot and cold together to choke him.

And just before he reaches to the means to drown them, Constance turns and beckons him with that sideways tuck of her mouth like: _come on_.

He takes a deep breath and stands on the exhalation, finds it only takes one pace to stand by them after all.

And they all sway for a tune. Then one tune more. Why not?


	6. Homeward

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which dancing is discussed; also: literature, class, warfare, chess and… other things…

“That was nice!”

“What?!”

“Good music!”

“Yeah!”

“Constance, do you want to get out of here?”

“Yes please!”

“How much…?”

“No, please…”

“I insist.”

“Seriously, Athos, I know how much Musketeers… look, this was my idea, so let me pay for this one, will you?”

“Pardon?”

“I’ll pay!”

“Is it me or is everyone shouting in here?”

“We’re leaving soon, d’Artagnan!”

“All right!”

Constance waves at Sylvie, makes _paying_ gestures. Sylvie holds a finger up: _one minute_. Constance nods extravagantly. Sylvie emerges with Adèle, who gestures broadly to the crowd between them, rolling her eyes, makes a paying gesture from Constance to herself then mouths _tomorrow?_ with eyebrows high. Constance smiles and nods, grabs the men and begins to tow them.

“Where are we going?”

“We can’t… hold on…” they reach outside, where it is marginally quieter, “hear ourselves speak in there.”

“True.”

“And…” her eyes sparkle, “it’s still early - I don’t want to end the night yet.”

“Where would you suggest?” asks Athos.

“My apartments at the Palace?”

“Won’t people thi…”

She stops Athos with a look. “People will think that two gallant Musketeers are escorting me back to my rooms. _My_ reputation is _impeccable_.”

He gives her one of those rare slanted smiles, complete with raised eyebrow. D’Artagnan grins at both of them.

The walk back to the Palace rings with talk of music and dancing. Constance has missed this kind of thing. The men are sympathetic, though they point out that when they go out in the town, the emphasis is usually on the proximity and cost-effectiveness of any drink, food, or gambling opportunities. D’Artagnan talks enthusiastically about the dancing in his part of Gascony, tries to teach them steps. Constance works so hard to suppress giggles at Athos hopping and turning, crow black in the twilight, through the Palace grounds, that she gets a case of hiccoughs and has to sit down for a good five minutes until they subside enough to let her breathe properly.

They comport themselves with decent sobriety through the corridors of the Louvre, though the men are surprised to find that Constance knows far more of the names of the guards than they do. However, by the time they reach Constance’s rooms, she and Athos have started quite the vehement, if properly muted, argument about literature.

“It’s just snobbish.”

“I can’t help but notice that’s your argument for a lot of…”

“Really? Well, maybe you’re happy for knowledge to remain out of the reach of common people…”

“Most common people can’t read French, let alone Lat…”

“Oh, _really?_ I think you’d be surprised. But even so, everyone knows _someone_ who can read French at least, and _they_ could read the books to them and then…”

“But my point remains that they’d lose a lot of the…”

“Better half the meaning, monsieur, than none at all. And that’s _my_ point - if people like you keep…”

“People like _me…?_ ”

She flaps her hand as they enter her outer rooms. “People like your family.”

“I don’t _have_ a f-”

“My apologies.” And she does look contrite. “But you know what I mean.”

“Sadly, madame, I do.”

They gaze at each other for a long moment, somewhere between exasperation and contrition.

“Well,” they say, and fall silent again. Constance lights a couple of candles to fill the space.

“Do you know what occurs to me?” says d’Artagnan, and they break off their gaze to look towards him, hovering by the door, which is resting open, against his foot.

“What’s that, d’Artagnan?” she says as she lights another couple of candles and lays her shawl over the back of the smaller comfortable chair.

“You two don’t know each other all that well.”

Athos frowns. “What’s this?” Constance walks slowly back towards the door, extinguishing the taper.

“And it would be a very good thing if you did, if,” he waves a shape between the three of them, “this is to work.”

“Well, of course, I’d love to, but…”

“ _So I think_ ,” says d’Artagnan, “I’m going to go for a walk and, er, let you two get better acquainted.”

“You”

“Wait”

“Bye!”

The door shuts.

“Dammit.”

“I don’t know what’s got into him.” She eyes him dryly. “Except you.”

He blushes with a horrified kind of frown, and then she realises exactly what she’s said, and her own blush starts.

“So…”

“You play chess…?” he says, overloud and fast, moving to the board.

“Yes!” She lowers her volume: “The, er, the Queen taught me.” 

His eyebrow rises briefly, but he says nothing, studying the board.

“You?”

“A little, long ago.”

Her eyebrows flick and she says, before she can prevent herself, “Of course.”

“Hmm.”

“Would you like a game?”

He frowns. “But this…” and waves towards the board.

She shakes her head dismissively. “A practice game is all. Well?”

His mouth softens and he inclines his head courteously. “I would be honoured.”

“Do you have a preference?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Colour. Oh, what am I saying? You’ll be black.”

He can’t suppress his smile at this and takes the seat she gestures and, between them, they start to put the pieces in place.

Ten minutes in, doublet shed, he, still looking at the board, says: “I’ve missed this, you know.” He sounds a little surprised.

“Chess?”

“Yes.” He sighs, shifts a fool, frowns. “D’Artagnan and Porthos will play draughts,” fast, noisy, insult-laden, carrying the occasional wager, “but chess is more…”

“Slow?”

“Heh. Yes. But also: not as easy a game to carry around or improvise. Or maybe it’s something else.” He waves his hand impatiently, watches as she shifts a pawn, frowns as one of his own disappears _en passant_. “Damn.”

“Something else?”

He shrugs. “Slow games are peacetime games.”

“We’re not at war.”

“Not now. Not yet.”

“Hmm.”

“You don’t like the thought of him going to war?” He keeps his eyes on the board, reaches, withdraws his hand, frowns some more. “I don’t blame you. War will… change a person.”

Frowning, he shifts his fool one square. _Temporising move_ , she thinks. _Probably._

She lifts the Knight and shifts him eastwards - this is how she thinks of boards. She says, quietly: “Athos, do you hate me?”

His head goes to one side, eyes still on the board. “For that move, no. Not yet.”

She looks up at him. “You know what I mean.”

She hears him sigh, softly, then he looks up at her. “No.” He is shaking his head, gently. “No, not at all, Constance. I. I’ve thought about it,” long and hard, “but I don’t.”

“That’s… That’s good.”

He looks back down at the board, appears to be intent on it as he says: “And you?”

She frowns. “Why would you think that? No.” He looks up, and his face is full of emotions - too many to sort. She reaches out a hand, reflexively, lays it on his crossed arms. “ _No_ , Athos.”

Without breaking gaze, he twists his wrist so that her grip now lies in his.

“I don’t,” he says, and she’s astonished to see his eyes brimming. He clears his throat, starts again. “I never meant to hurt anyone. I didn’t even want him to know, but… he found out. And.”

“And he felt the same way.”

“Yes.” And she sees his eyes darken, wonders if their first intimate encounter was as… sweeping… as her own with d’Artagnan. And now, of course, her imagination is running riot, having been sternly suppressed from envisaging any of that since the morning.

He watches her eyes change, colour start to mount her neck, feels something like danger, but can’t quite bring himself to let go of her hand yet.

She clears her throat. “You care about him a lot.” 

“Yes. That’s why I tried. I mean. Hmm. You make him happy,” he finishes.

“That’s why you pushed him away?” 

“Yes.” 

“Because you thought that we should…”

“Yes.”

“You’re an idiot, aren’t you?” 

“Possibly.” His face and voice are wry, self-mocking. “You’re certainly not the only person to tell me this recently.”

Her smile spreads slowly, and he answers it, and for a while they just sit there, quiet and still.

She clears her throat, shifts her gaze downwards. “Your turn.”

“Oh, of course. Sorry.” His hand twitches in hers and she lets go as he turns it to reach for and touch the Queen’s pawn. He pauses, mouth pursed, swipes at his eyes swiftly with his other arm, sniffs. “J’adoube.” 

She nods.

“Actually…” and he lifts it in a decisive move.

“Interesting,” she says. 

“Really?” 

“Well, yes. I mean: pity I’ll have to eat the other one, but…”

“I’m sorry?” his head goes up in her peripheral vision, and he sounds a little shocked.

Her hand is on her Tower as she looks up. “My next move takes your…” 

“Oh.” He looks at the board, then up again, brow creasing. “Yes. I’ve just never heard it called that before.” 

“Oh…” she reviews. “Oh. Yes. Well, the Queen tended… tends to call it that.”

A look of barely suppressed amusement lights him.

She shakes her head, feeling a slightly reluctant laughter welling. Then neatly snicks her Tower forward to knock an unprotected pawn off.

He groans. “I had such high hopes for that pawn.”

“Sorry.”

“You don’t sound sorry.”

“Oops. Your turn.”

Two turns later, he says, delicately: “You and the Queen…”

“Yes?”

“Can I ask…” You do know it’s treason, probably, yes? Although, you can’t get her with child, so there is that.

“Yes?”

He shakes his head abruptly. “Actually, it’s none of my business.”

“Well, no…” Then, in a rush, she says: “D’Artagnan seems so angry about it, and, well…”

He looks up at her, holds her gaze. “I know. It hardly seems fair.” He lays his left arm on the table along the side of the board. “I mean… you fell… you love her…?”

She nods, miserable, eyes brimming.

“And anyone can see how much you mean to her.”

“Really?”

He slants a dry, _come on_ look her way. She slaps his extended arm gently, with a grin, lays her own alongside it.

He looks down, ostensibly at the board, but is abruptly very aware of the heat of her arm against his, the way her fingers are stirring, maybe out of her volition…

Constance is staring at the board with all her might, while her traitor fingers stroke ever more plainly at his sleeve, thinking: No, no. That’s.

Dangerous, he’s thinking.

_Yes._

Oh, damn.

His own fingers roll and stretch against her, then reach back, snag the material of her sleeve, pull it tight.

She swallows, stands, says: “I’m going to have some water. Would you, er…”

He stands. “Constance.”

“Thirsty.”

He pushes back his chair and takes a half-step towards her. “I didn’t mean…”

“No, it’s me - I didn’t mean…”

“Because.”

“Oh dear…”

“Maybe you should sit down.”

She moves to the broader of the two comfortable chairs, sits a little sideways in one corner. “You, you, should… sit too.” And she pats the upholstery.

“If you’re sure.”

“I.” She swallows, takes a breath, smiles, a little mechanically, but brightly enough, up at him. “I trust you, Athos.”

I wish I trusted myself.

He nods, face a little blank, folds himself, canted towards her, perching, into as little of the seat as possible.

When he looks up from his lap, she’s studying him, and now he can’t look away.

Oh, hell…

“I-I…”

“If,” she says, slowly, “I _did_ mean it…?” and lets the question hang there.

The over-familiar wash of heat and cold. He can’t trust his own voice, so nods a little curtly. “Mm-hm?”

“Would…? Oh… silly.”

“No,” he manages, then, quickly: “Sorry, not.”

A light frown. “Hmm?”

“Not. Not silly. Er.”

She reaches the small distance blindly and touches his hand as it sits on his knee. He turns it and grips hers back; their fingers make slow ripples on each other while their breathing starts to become shallow.

This is a terrible idea.

 _Oh, no it isn’t_.

Oh God, it really isn’t.

The doors opens softly behind him.


	7. Bound

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a definitely not terrible idea starts to bloom.

“Everything all right?” comes d’Artagnan’s voice.

Their gazes stay locked on each other. “Yes,” says Athos.

“Thank you,” says Constance.

He hears him move to behind the chair. “How’s the debate going?”

“We’ve reached an interesting philosophical nexus.”

“Yes,” she says. “We’re exploring a conundrum.”

“I see…” There’s a smile in his voice. “Can I help at all?”

“I think,” says Constance, “this may be one for us to work out by ourselves.”

“I see…” and the other chair creaks.

“Athos,” she says, and the tremor in her voice is barely detectable.

“Yes?” he manages.

“I think it’s your move next.”

“Ah.”

They sit in silence a while longer, their fingers eloquent, now skating lightly over wrists and knuckles and, as his thumb grazes a slow slant across her palm, he sees her eyes begin to shutter as her mouth grows a little slack, and now there’s only one question to ask.

“Constance,” he says, his voice like raw silk, “may I kiss you?”

She gasps lightly, then lifts her left hand from her lap while her right continues to dance on his. She lays it on his cheek, lightly. “So formal,” she murmurs. “Of course.”

Their right hands grip, pull, moving them those extra inches closer.

He starts so gently, it’s barely like being kissed at all, and she leans into him, wanting to taste more of his mouth. It opens a little, and she runs her tongue along the place where their lips meet, tugging the softest moan from him. And, as if that’s a signal they’ve both been waiting for, their left hands flutter in unison to each other’s shoulders, and the kiss deepens again, but still slow, still delicate; nothing like what she would have imagined.

She is so very sure, he thinks, moving slowly, with grace and absolute assertion of her desire, and, at the thought of her desire, he feels his head grow lighter, feels himself swell in a rush. He pulls back. She looks at him in consternation, him at her in disbelief, before cupping the back of her neck and leaning to kiss the side of it, again slowly, precisely, laying a complex pattern of lips and tongue down her flesh.

Her breath is coming hard. Her eyes roll. Dear God! Was this what Ninon had seen? This gentle, implacable passion beneath the hard surface of his pain? Was this… was this what d’Artagnan had seen? What he’d taken? Her right hand tightens on his.

Her head goes back as he reaches her collarbone, her eyes rolling shut. She gently cups the back of his head as he moves further down and both of them moan. No. Not both. _All_ of them.

D’Artagnan is on his feet again, awash in sensation, seeing his lovers kiss, seeing them start to lose themselves in each other. He’d never dreamt… _Well, no, that’s not entirely true, is it?_ His left hand goes to his own neck. His right smoothes down his torso, slow, but freighted with intent. As Athos’s mouth moves to the top of her breasts, he cups himself through his breeches. Her eyes shoot open as they all moan.

“D’Artagnan!” she barks. “If you don’t get over here right now, I will fuck this man into unconsciousness and there’ll be none left over for you…!” Athos chuckles unrestrainedly into her cleavage, then snakes out a tongue when she taps him in remonstrance, sending her into gasps.

She gasps again as he breaks off, lets go of her hand, reaches over her, seizes her legs, and swings them up over his lap as he slides sideways towards her, returning to dance his tongue along the line where her gown meets her flesh.

D’Artagnan kneels with alacrity next to the arm of the chair she’s leaning against, shoots forward to kiss her as she hooks the collar of his shirt and pulls him to her. Their mouths crush together, a heated, desperate clash. Her left hand slides to caress his neck, her right to Athos’s, feeling the strokes of his tongue redouble on her. Their moans break out again, cascading from one to the other.

“Mmmh, mmffConst, Constance,” says d’Artagnan, grinning wickedly on her, “ _unh_ , don’t you mmmnthink we should, _ah_ , think about hh-how we should, _oh_ , mmmake this fair? You know? Contingencies for…”

“Athos?”

“Mmhyes?”

“Shut him up, will you?”

“Gladly.”

He reaches up, pulls d’Artagnan to him, and, to her delighted shock, they kiss, hard, across her. She feels sensation well in her so hard and fast she wonders if she’s about to, somehow, climax right there and then. She finds she’s stopped breathing, gasps for air, taps the two of them on their shoulders.

“Oh, sorry,” murmurs Athos, turning almost blindly to her. She cups his face, brings his mouth to hers, moans as his tongue arrows into her, closing her lips around its sliding length until they break apart, wild-eyed and gasping.

D’Artagnan taps them on the shoulders and she turns to kiss him, his mouth soft and supple against hers, tongue less bold but no less insistent.

Inches away, Athos feels his heart rate pick up and his breathing tighten. Bright spots appear in his vision and cold twines through him. Not now, _not now!_

At the repeated hitch in his breathing D’Artagnan’s eye opens, then narrows. He breaks off from Constance, saying: “Come on,” to her.

Athos hears her protestations faintly as D’Artagnan swings her legs off him and pulls her to her feet.

“What’s wrong?”

“He just gets like this sometimes. Overwhelmed.”

“Oh God, is he all right? His breathing…”

“We just need to help bring him back, that’s all. Gently.”

“Back from _where?_ ”

“Himself.”

“Wait. Back _to_ himself or _from_ himself?”

“Constance…”

“Sorry. What do we do? Oh, wait.” She patters to the bedroom, rummages in a chest.

Something soft is placed in his lap, and his fists are gently lifted to it. A scent rises, spirals into him, pushing gently against the cold. A soft hand at his temple, stroking back his hair. A strong hand at his shoulder, thumb circling slowly. A hand on each knee.

He is.

Breathe.

He is.

“You’re safe.”

He is.

“That’s it.”

Breathe. The chest cracks, air and scent and warmth flood in. Hands. So warm, safe. What 

“Why,” he croaks, “does everything smell of lavender?”

He looks down to find them crouched either side, both their eyes brimming. “Don’t cry,” he says, thickly. “Please don’t.”

And then they’re kneeling up, bent over awkwardly trying to hug him, and he finds that he has to unclench his fingers from the thing on his lap, and there’s no way to easily touch them except to kind of pat their faces and they laugh a little and he feels lips soft on each cheek and then he’s turning his head to mumble into first one mouth, which turns out to be d’Artagnan’s, then the other, and he’s all warmth again, pushing up from the seat, saying: “I need to stand up,” and “no, don’t go.”

They stand in a tight circle of arms, each wrist gently clasped behind each back, nuzzling and sniffing. He thinks, muzzily: _One for all._

_And all for one._


	8. Circle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the nature of good manners is explored, along with other, even more sensitive matters.

His mind and vision clear, more quickly than he would have expected - it’s over faster each time, leaving fewer dregs behind, and he smiles, feeling sharp and present again, turning to d’Artagnan, who murmurs “Uh-oh…” before Athos captures his mouth, slips his hand down from the small of his back to cup and press.

As they break off, Constance says: “‘Uh-oh’…?” just before he pulls her closer and bends for as warm a kiss, still with his hand on d’Artagnan.

“Yes,” pants d’Artagnan, “he. Oh, _fuck…_ ” as Athos’s hand slips lower again.

Constance’s hands are hooked around the back of his neck. He breaks off, warns her “Hold tight!” before bending and lifting her into his arms. 

She stares at him, somewhere between confusion, amusement, and deep arousal.

“Constance, I would very much like to take you to bed.” 

“Yes,” she says, decisively. “God, yes.” She pauses. “D’Artagnan too?” 

“Of course. If that’s” 

“ _Yes!_ ” they chorus quickly, and d’Artagnan fetches candles as Athos carries her through to the bedroom.

For a moment he considers throwing her to the bed, but that feels… disrespectful, especially for

Oh fuck

The first time.

She sees his eyes slip, reaches up to draw his face down, kissing him until he lowers her gently to her feet. Dear God, he’s strong, she thinks.

Swiftly on the back of that thought comes the image of what he must look like beneath his shirt, and, breathless, she begins to pull at it, while he works to distract her, kissing her mouth, cheek, neck, plucking the pins from her hair one by one as she gasps, moans, pulls and sways.

Now d’Artagnan stands behind her, warm and solid, hands on her waist as he kisses the other side of her neck from Athos. Barely able to stand, her fists bunch in the shirt and wrench it out, Athos groaning against her neck as his fingers tighten on her arm. D’Artagnan’s fingers move to her back and begin to undo her gown. Athos pants against her as her fingers explore his torso, his skin so feverishly hot to her touch she worries whether her hands are cold, but then he presses himself closer to her, hips rocking slightly, and she ducks with a smile to mouth his chest.

Athos’s head rocks back as he feels her lips against him, and d’Artagnan leans over her shoulder to kiss him. He then reaches to the back of Athos’s neck, takes his collar, and starts to pull his shirt off him. Free, he throws it, and returns to Constance’s gown, working at the ties, glad that this gown is a simpler affair than yesterday’s. He slips it down over her shoulders, which she wriggles to help, but gets stuck at her waist.

“Hold on,” she says to Athos with a chuckle that turns to a moan as he gathers the hair off her shoulders so he can kiss the bare skin there.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, a low, purring sound that strikes to the core of her, “you were saying?”

“So,” she pants, “very… mmh… rude.”

“Really, Madame,” he says, reproachfully, “I’m being _very_ polite…”

“I just need to turn to, oh, to help, d’Ah, _ah_ ,” Athos’s mouth is on her breasts again, and he pulls back to take her gently by the shoulders and turn her.

D’Artagnan is kneeling in front of her, and looks up with a wicked slant. “You’ll have to help me,” he twinkles, hands on her hips.

She reaches and moves his fingers to the first button at her waist.

“Ah,” he says, “I see. But I think,” he says, running his fingertips slowly down the long line of small buttons, “I’d prefer to start at the bottom and work my way up.” And even though he could undo two or three at the top and she could step out and be done…

“There’s just something about the sight of him on his knees,” murmurs Athos, hands at the top of her arms, breath hot and wicked in her ear. She has to agree.

“Let me help you out of this,” he says, fingers on the stays of her stomacher.

“Mmh,” she says, nodding, unsure of her voice. His touch is sure and slow, and each loosening feels like a tiny caress against her back and sides. D’Artagnan has reached her thighs when the stomacher comes away, and Athos’s fingers slide round to her lower ribs, now covered only by her shift.

“Now Constance,” he says, “I don’t wish to be considered rude…”

“Of course not,” she murmurs, watching and feeling d’Artagnan ascend.

“So I’m hoping you’ll guide me.”

“What do you have in mind?” 

“I would like,” says that raw silk voice, “to slide my hands higher - to caress these beautiful breasts of yours, my palms cupping, my fingers spiralling inwards to the most sensitive flesh, to dance there.”

“Christ.”

“I want to do this until your knees weaken and you can’t contain your moans. And then I want to continue doing it for as long as we can bear.”

“Nnh…”

“So, Madame, what do you say? Would that be rude or very, _very_ ” his fingers and voice tighten on the word, “polite?”

“I think,” she says carefully, trying to keep her voice steady, “that if you _don’t_ , I might have to hurt you.”

“I’ll take that for a yes please.”

“Mmh!”

He is true to his word, every one. And then her gown comes free; she looks down to see d’Artagnan folding it away gently, then looking up at her with those warm, enormous eyes, a question in them. She nods and he takes her shoes off and works his way up each leg with questing fingers to remove her hose. She loves the look of intense concentration on his face, losing sight of it every so often when Athos’s caresses sway her head back, her eyes rolling shut.

Soon she feels her shift moving up, d’Artagnan laying kisses against her legs until he can remove her underwear, slip it down, and lay more kisses directly against her mound.

She rocks, helpless, moaning between them, Athos supporting some of her weight as her knees, as predicted, lose even more traction. D’Artagnan raises his hands and bares her to the waist. Athos takes over, pulling it up off her and now returning his hands to her bare flesh.

It’s too much. “I. I need to lie down. Please!”

They help her walk to the bed and lay her on it. She points, unsteadily, says “Clothes off, you. Please.” And they do. But slowly, kissing, pushing off d’Artagnan’s doublet, taking his shirt off between them, kissing again, Athos pulling d’Artagnan’s head back by the hair so that he groans and she feels excitement arrow through her as Athos roughly mouths his way down his neck, using his teeth as well as lips and tongue on him. She wonders, briefly, if it’s possible for a person to pass out from being too aroused.

Their hands dive to each other’s points and they all-but wrestle like it’s a competition. Her hand finds herself as d’Artagnan gets Athos’s breeches open first and begins to stroke him, Athos swaying and groaning before redoubling his own efforts to expose d’Artagnan.

They are intensely beautiful together, she thinks, the candlelight flattering them to an almost inhuman degree. She thinks, abruptly, of those huge murals of wrestling angels and clamps down hurriedly on the image. Athos now has his hand on d’Artagnan while pulling down his breeches with the other, but it seems that d’Artagnan’s breeches really are tighter than Athos’s. She’d wondered.

They are laughing, and when does she ever see Athos laugh? His breeches around his knees, toeing at his boots, trying to dodge d’Artagnan, catching at his wrists to hold them back, the laughter dying, the plunge into another heated kiss. And now she feels like she’s spying on something private, Athos pushing d’Artagnan back, slowly, d’Artagnan surely giving ground willingly, until he’s pressed against the bedpost nearest to her, moaning, head back.

Then Athos smiles sideways at Constance, and says: “Keep him there for me, will you?” while he dives to wrench off d’Artagnan’s writhing boots.

“Keep… how…?”

“Order him.”

Brain whirling, she nevertheless sits up, crawls to the foot of the bed, catches d’Artagnan’s rolling eye, and says, voice firm: “Stay there,” planting her palm on his chest for good measure. He presses himself back, hands locked behind him on the post. She feels her eyebrows rise.

“Dear God.”

“Oh yes,” says Athos, with a very satisfied voice as he gets the other boot off and peels down d’Artagnan’s breeches somewhat roughly, taking them and his hose off in nearly one move.

“I feel bound to say,” says d’Artagnan, “that this is pretty much cheating.”

“You’re probably right,” says Athos, breezily, kicking off his own boots and removing his own breeches and hose. “On the other hand,” he kicks them to one side, “I remember someone stripping his shirt off when we were sparring the other day, as he tried to distract me.”

“I got a bruise for that.”

“Oh, come on.”

“That was you?” asks Constance.

“ _That_ was _him_ ,” says Athos, pointing to his darkened right temple and then the other man. He takes a single stride to the bed, gathers her in his arms so that she is high on her knees and pressed close to him. His eyes are very dark, and she kisses him hard to master the near-panic rising in her. She strokes the side of his face and he slows, gentling, caressing her throat and shoulders softly, working his way down to her breasts again. He then bends to kiss her neck, exploring her with his tongue and lips. Her eyes roll, drowning in the combined sensations of mouth and hands.

“You _really_ like necks, don’t you?”

“He really does,” says d’Artagnan.

“Are you going to stay there all night?”

“That depends - are you going to release me?”

“Oh… _Ohh_ , what will ha-a-appen if I do?”

“I’m going to take my tongue to your breasts,” he says, voice darkening, “using it to caress the curve of you, kissing you there, drawing you into my mouth, while my fingers move gently down your body to”

“I release you, d’Artagnan!”

“Uh-oh,” says Athos.


	9. Parry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which sharing is definitely caring.

D’Artagnan insinuates himself behind Athos, arms snaking around his torso to slant his left hand up to his collarbone, and his right down to his cock where he starts a series of firm strokes that have Athos arching back into him with a groan. Constance shifts so that she can suck on his nipple, which tents hard under her tongue. His eyes shoot open and he gasps, grits his teeth, and strains forward against d’Artagnan’s grip on his chest.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” says the younger man, grinding against his back, shifting his stroke to make it lighter but longer, so that it now encompasses his balls.

“Ah, but - fuck, _fuck!_ \- nnhyou have a debt owing to, to, _unnh_ , _her!_ ”

“Ooh, he’s right, you know,” she says. “I recall inventive promises regarding your tongue and these…”

“A promise is a promise,” agrees d’Artagnan, releasing a panting Athos who staggers to lean on the bedpost as d’Artagnan moves to kneel on the bed. He smiles warmly at her, says: “Will you lie down, please?” She complies, smiling herself.

He moves across her to kneel at her left hand side, swoops in to kiss her mouth, then works his way down her cheek and neck, taking his time, curving over her as her anticipation grows until the tightening spirals of his tongue land on her nipple, already straining hard, sensitive almost to the point of pain. As he closes his lips around her, the tip of his tongue strums and she moans, hips starting to rock forward, ahead of her volition. His fingers curl complex patterns down her slowly to rest on her mound.

“Oh God, please, d’Artagnan!”

And he complies, sliding one finger inside her slowly as she pushes forward to meet it. They both groan. He barely moves, holding still, finger crooking slightly as she rocks herself onto it, making tiny, delicious sounds with each thrust of her hips. He sits back on his heels, looking around, and spots Athos staring from the side of the bed, eyes wild, one hand clenched in his hair, the other on his belly, clearly aching to touch himself and not daring to.

D’Artagnan grins and beckons him over with his head, right hand on Constance’s breast, left deep inside her. Athos scrambles up and kisses him, hands exploring his torso, running down over his back and buttocks. He grins against his mouth, pulls back enough to murmur “You should join in.”

“But…” And then he makes the connection. D’Artagnan watches his face slacken, feels his hands slow and his weight sway for a moment.

“Yes?”

“God, yes,” he whispers back.

“Wha-what are you… two… whis… bloody hell…” She looks up to see Athos kissing d’Artagnan hard, hands in his hair.

D’Artagnan feels her pulse and clutch around him, tugging a moan from his throat.

Athos breaks off and swoops down to Constance’s ear. “Constance, may I touch you… where he’s touching you?”

“ _Ohhh._ Oh, Athos, oh, yes please, yes!”

He kisses her as she rolls and moans her pleasure into his mouth, and then works his way down, kissing towards her breast as d’Artagnan had done earlier, only running his fingers over her torso more lightly, raising goosebumps on his way until he’s playing at her thigh, tiny circles that spiral tightly towards her mound and then

To her shock, his fingers don’t replace d’Artagnan’s but _join_ his. When she realises what’s happening, her throat looses a desperate-sounding wail of desire and abandonment. Within moment she is thrusting hard onto them, which makes them both groan aloud.

Athos kisses d’Artagnan, hard and fast, then dives back to Constance’s breast. Beside him, d’Artagnan does likewise, causing Constance to cry out again.

She has very few coherent thoughts now, but one of them is about knowing for certain by this very unique sensation of both breasts being sucked, licked, kissed at the same… ah… ti-ime that she is in… in bed with two… ah, ah Christ, two… _God!_

Athos feels something arrow through him, undoing him a little on the way, as Constance arches, cries out, contracts around him and d’Artagnan. Both of them moan against her.

She’s the first. The first since

_Don’t think it. Just… be here. Here._

Oh God, oh God, oh God, he’s panting silently, but here she is, right here, under his tongue, narrowed around his finger, and d’Artagnan’s mouth is working over to kiss him around her nipple and

_Ride it - lean into the sensations, own them_

Oh. Oh, I see.

And he’s kissing d’Artagnan and then they’re kissing Constance, and it’s messy and laughing and she says “Hold me, hold me,” but can’t seem to stop giggling, and d’Artagnan withdraws so he can wind his arms around her, but Athos stays inside her, readjusting his weight so that he can lie alongside, kiss her shoulder.

She is full of a sparkling kind of energy, and she kisses d’Artagnan hard. He responds, and she feels an echo in her quim, hears Athos gasp lightly beside her. And he starts to flex inside her, moving ever so gently. She hums, hears him chuckle, and his warmth disappears from her side. Still wound tight in d’Artagnan’s arms and kisses, she feels herself start to respond, a ripple down her whole body that ends in a rocking against his hand. Athos’s mouth is working its way down her body, achingly slowly, the brush of his beard surprisingly soft, the texture raising exquisite chills even as his mouth heats her.

He pauses at her hip and she raises her leg with a barely-articulated moan of acquiescence, feeling him slip another finger inside her, his tongue first on her lips then on her nub. She pushes towards him, quite without volition, hearing her own hunger in his groan as his mouth engulfs her.

Breathless, she breaks off from d’Artagnan’s kisses, who says “Oh God, dear God,” and she feels from the brush of his hair on her neck that he’s looking down at Athos.

D’Artagnan has to pull his hips away from Constance, in serious danger of spending himself against her as he watches her rock into Athos’s mouth. He focuses on controlling his breathing, feels himself pull back from the brink by the narrowest of margins. He can tell that she’ll climax again soon, loves that he’s coming to know her signs all over again, that guilt and fear have been banished, and that he’s sharing it with the one… with the other… with…

 _If you start crying now they’ll get very confused_.

Constance feels it flare through her core and all the way to her fingertips like white fire, shuddering, gripping them both hard, relaxing in a flurry of tingles and nameless sounds.

In a place somewhere between delight and jubilation, Athos waits, and feels her still making miniscule, otherwise invisible rocking motions against his lightly-crooked fingers. He starts to move in her again - slow, straight, and steady, hears her gasp with shocked arousal and feels her push back hard at him. Soon he’s kneeling back, thrusting hard into her - no gentle, elaborate beckonings, just fucking her with his hand, as her cries turn to grunts and shouts for every slamming motion and on one, final, echoing scream she tightens like a vice around him and collapses.

“Dear fucking God,” whispers d’Artagnan.

Athos nods. He’s currently beyond words, and is quite worried that anything that comes out of his mouth next might be beyond his control.

Constance is reaching for him and he lowers himself down awkwardly to stretch along her side again.

“Can’t move?” asks d’Artagnan sympathetically.

Athos shakes his head, eyes wide. He is genuinely worried that he might injure Constance if he tries to move his hand away, she is that tight. She is nuzzling at him, and d’Artagnan rolls her boneless torso towards Athos so she can flail her arm around his shoulder, kiss his face, mumble sweetly. After a few moments he realises that she seems to be actively trying to explain something, and it takes him several goes before he realises that she’s advising on the mechanics of withdrawal.

“Oh.”

She feels him slide out of her finally with something like loss and something like relief, slumps to her back and stretches… everything. It feels delicious. Under normal circumstances she would fall asleep right now, but that really wouldn’t do. She opens her eyes with an effort, trying to work out how she’ll rouse herself, only to see d’Artagnan leaning across her in order to suck at the fingers that Athos clearly had inside her. His eyes are closed, intent, and he’s making tiny sounds of appetite. Athos is propped on his elbow next to her and his face is a picture of barely-controlled surrender as d’Artagnan’s fingers shift the angle of his hand, and his tongue darts out to lap at his palm.

She feels a smile spread across her as she starts to waken. The men turn to her as she stirs, humming. “Hello,” says Athos, softly, and she sees something in his eyes which nearly confounds her, but they roll back in his head the next moment and she resurfaces, tries to rise.

“Rest, r-rest,” he murmurs, head thrown back.

She feels her eyebrows go up. “When there are sights like this to see?” He smiles at this, then gasps.

“D’Artagnan,” she asks, her voice still sticky, “what are you doing?” Sees him smile around Athos’s fingers, slip them from his mouth.

“Just cleaning up.”

She sits up and kisses him, hands on his face, deepening the kiss rapidly, sweeping with her tongue. “You didn’t leave any for me to share?”

He hands Athos’s fingers to her wordlessly, watches her echo his actions, hears Athos moan, sees the tip of her tongue reach between his fingers. Athos dives forward to capture her mouth and she moans in return at her own taste on him.

“God!” she says, throwing her head back. “God, I love that.”

She can hear the men breathing heavily, see that they’re reining in their movements, gives them a smile that feels perilously like a smirk.

“You know what I think?” she declares, and she can hear how drunk on lust she sounds, and realises that she barely cares - only enough to expend extra effort to ensure they understand what she’s saying.

“What’s that?” asks d’Artagnan, voice smoky, eyes like dark pools in the lowering candlelight.

“I think it’s time to take care of Athos.” Athos makes a sound suspiciously like a whimper. "Care to show me how?”

“Oh God, yes,” says d’Artagnan.


	10. Riposte

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a masterclass is delivered.

D’Artagnan dives, not onto Athos, but off the bed. Athos turns to Constance and they both shrug. She takes the opportunity to stroke her hands over the expanse of his shoulders and down his back, watching him stretch into the caress, muscles a precision of ripples in the candlelight, broken here and there with scars of various ages. She resolutely refuses to think about them, but runs her hands with impartial affection across the flesh in front of her, hearing him almost purr at the attention. A flash image crosses her mind of a battle-battered, dark-furred tomcat; broad-shouldered, deep-chested, light-eyed, swaggering to curl on her lap.

She turns him gently to sit up, facing the end of the bed, so that she can focus properly on him, but forgets her original intent a minute later, brain still wonderfully foggy, kneeling up to press herself against his back and let her hands wander across his front. He rolls his head and shoulders back lightly into her, and it’s to this that d’Artagnan brings the light of fresh candles he’s managed to find in the other room. He bestows them on various surfaces and Constance can’t help but shake her head and grin at the irrepressible energy he’s brought in. He walks up to them and both of them heave a simultaneous happy sigh at the sight of the long, lean, swordsman’s body graced and glossed by mellow light.

Constance impulsively kisses Athos’s neck, and d’Artagnan, smile slanting over him, places a knee on the bed and leans in to kiss the other side. Athos stiffens and shivers between them, head rocking back. D’Artagnan’s hands start to rove his upper body and finds Constance’s hand; he interweaves his fingers with hers and the three of them sway together for long moments until d’Artagnan withdraws gently and leans back, both feet on the floor again, hands outheld to Athos who, at a small push from Constance, slides off the bed to stand with him.

D’Artagnan turns him gently so that his left side is nearer the bed, places his hands along his jawline, and starts to kiss him very softly. Athos’s hands come up to hold him, very simply at first but, as their kisses deepen, he starts to explore his back and then, under Constance’s delighted eyes, his hands descend to cup and knead d’Artagnan’s buttocks. D’Artagnan’s breathing shifts and he pushes back against Athos’s hands. Constance can see their erections pressing against each other’s bellies as they start to grind lightly against each other. She understands that d’Artagnan has taken her suggestion as a rather literal request to showcase their lovemaking, and the knowledge that she’s implicitly permitted to watch them deepens her excitement, setting her free from guilt and embarrassment.

D’Artagnan brings his hands down to twist and roll Athos’s nipples. He hisses and moans, fingers digging into d’Artagnan’s flesh. Their kisses are becoming harder, faster, both of them bringing teeth into play, groans coming more frequently, with gasping breaks, heads back. Then d’Artagnan shifts the rhythm, head coming forward to mouth Athos’s neck. Athos is moaning and rocking, and slips his hand between them, doing something that Constance can’t quite see that causes them both to make the most exquisitely desperate sounds. She crawls forward to sit on the edge of the bed, peers forward to see that Athos has both their members in his grip and is pulling at them together. She feels her pulse jump and her breathing shift.

D’Artagnan, breathing hard, puts his right hand to Athos’s chest, just below his left shoulder, straightens his arm slowly. Athos’s eyes open to see d’Artagnan, hair hanging over his face, shaking his head. He raises it to look Athos in the eye, and they stay there, suspended for a moment until Athos gives a tiny, upwards nod and gently lets go. He then raises his hand slowly and starts to lick and suck it clear of the juices that have already accumulated. D’Artagnan grins, shaking his head again, blowing his hair clear, then bends close again, starts to kiss and lick at Athos’s neck and shoulder, then down his chest, slowly lowering himself, fingers gripping and stroking as he goes. Constance feels another kick to her chest and guts as the long tongue trails down Athos’s ribs to his belly.

Oh God, so close. Please.

His kisses slow as they reach and circle Athos’s cock, which twitches and strains. Athos leans back a little with his eyebrows up, lip bitten, hands resting originally on d’Artagnan’s shoulders then sliding as he descends - the right to his own shallowly heaving chest, the other to his hip.

So suddenly that she and Athos gasp together, d’Artagnan plunges to engulf him. “Christ, ah, _Christ!_ ” he cries, left hand flailing, feet shifting as his balance spoils. Constance, unthinking, catches his hand, stands, runs her right hand along his arm to prop it and him. He turns his upper body and uses his steadied arm to draw her nearer to his side, bending slightly towards her. She goes on tiptoes, kisses him, and he kisses her back, immediately deep and desperate, one hand in her hair, cupping the back of her head, the other resting at the junction of her neck and shoulder.

She pulls back, stares wildly at him “I,” she says, “I never…”

“I never expected,” he murmurs gently, completing their thought, gaze meeting hers, shaking his head lightly. A long, rattling groan breaks from him, and his eyes roll back. She looks down to see that he is deep inside d’Artagnan’s mouth, and presumably his throat as well. She reaches up and tugs his head down to her, kisses him hard. He moans helplessly into her mouth.

“Khyell, mmmp-tell her.”

“What?”

“Tell her,” says d’Artagnan, breathlessly, moving to kiss Athos’s balls.

“What’s this?” she demands.

“He, oh, ohh…!” Athos’s head goes back.

She looks down. D’Artagnan’s hand is moving fast on him. He grins up at her. “He always makes me do this. His turn.”

“Not… Not aalllwww-oh!”

She grins, a little uncertainly. D’Artagnan’s hand goes to Athos’s thigh and his face is lost to view again under him. She looks up at Athos. “What’s this?”

“I… Mmmh-I. I have to… to tell you howww, ah! F-fuck! How it, it feels.”

“What he’s doing?”

“Mmm-hmm!”

“Right now?”

“Y-yes!”

“Oh, my.”

He manages to crack an eye open at her. She grins up at him, taps his cheek gently. “Go on, then.”

“Oh, the b-a-astard p- _pair_ of you!”

“Yup!” they chorus.

“I always thought I’d… hmmm _die_ in battle,” groans Athos, “but you two have o-other… _ah_ … i-ideas… Don’t you?”

“We have _lots_ of other ideas,” says Constance, amazed to hear her own voice so husky. She fights down her flare of embarrassment to keep her gaze steady on him; his other eye opens to stare at her, and the intensity of his expression is almost too much for either of them to bear. She finds her breath echoing his breath, swaying as he sways, taken by everything he must be feeling.

But she has to know more, so she pushes herself to sway close to him, murmur: “Tell me. Tell me more.”

“Uh,” he manages, eyes sliding from hers, “he’s… now, now he’s taking me… oh _fuck_ , so _deep_.”

“How does it feel?” 

“He. Trust. I trust him. It’s so soft, so warm, bu-but I can feel the hard edges of…”

“Teeth?” 

“Mmmh!”

“What else?” 

“Ev-every time I. Uh. I-I am all, all the way insssside, I, I feel the back of his throat giving way against me.” 

“How is he _doing_ that?!” she wonders.

“Fff-ucked if I know. I daren’t.” 

“You use your mouth on him too?” 

“Y-hnnn!-yes! Yes! Eq-equal.” 

“Apart from one thing,” says d’Artagnan, withdrawing to stroke him again. “Well, two really.” 

“Oh…?”

“Um, things w-we, _oh fuck_ , like differently.”

“That’s fair,” she says. “But how does _this_ feel, right now?” 

“He’s… mmmhm-hm-hm…” It’s like a warm, boozy chuckle. “His tongue is, is cupping my balls - licking, stroking, and - _oh!_ \- going r-rright under. Oh, _wow_.” An evil-sounding chuckle from d’Artagnan. Athos’s eyes stutter shut. “His thumbs are pressing on my thighs, persuading me to part them further.” He smiles. “Should I part them, Constance?”

“Do you want to?” 

“Oh, I’m not sure. It’s nice, _hmm_ , but not as nice as…” his face slackens for a fraction of a second, “burying my face in you. God, that was… Oh, God.”

She feels herself redden. And swell.

“Oh, you taste good, Constance. So fucking good. You both do.” He groans. “God, if I could somehow have you both in my mouth at the same time I could die the next moment and be happy. Fuck. Sorry. Fuck. But.”

What an entire bottle of cognac couldn’t do… thinks d’Artagnan.

“Athos…” says Constance slowly. “I release you from your obligation, if you want to stop narrating…”

“Mmmaybe. Augh, his tongue. His tongue against me.” He fumbles a little, eyes still closed, to bring his fingertips against the top of her thighs, ever so gently. “Right… _there_.”

“Mmh. Oh. Oh dear…”

“Now ascending. Oh fuck. Teeth, so gentle, teeth on…” And then he puts his head back with another of those soul-rattling groans, and she looks down to see d’Artagnan’s mouth stretched around the livid head of Athos’s cock. It’s clear that he is very close to climax. Achingly slowly, d’Artagnan pushes himself down and around him. Constance can’t tear her gaze away. Athos lays his hand, surprisingly gently, on the crown of d’Artagnan’s head.

D’Artagnan reaches to Athos to pull him towards him, into him. Athos groans again, his hips starting to rock furiously. “Oh, fucking God, yes!” he moans. “Oh, God, I’m, I can’t.” 

“Yes, you can,” she says, confused, touching his arm. “He wants you to - _we_ want you to.”

He grates a laugh, a little wildly. “I can’t lllast. I. Oh. Oh, fuck, yes!” He turns his arm under her hand, grips her tight. “Kiss… ss… me…”

She’s torn between wanting to see and wanting to be, until he says: “ _Please…_ ” and she leans on his arm, standing on her toes to kiss and kiss and kiss his mouth, smooth his hair back from his forehead with her other hand, feel him arc and shudder at the release he cries out into her.


	11. Envelopment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which engagement is sweet and slow, and it turns out that the student still has something to learn after all…

Athos staggers, but manages not to fall, two pairs of hands holding him. He is experiencing the most intense climax of his life, and it doesn’t appear to be ending - a throb of molten ecstasy echoing throughout his entire body, unravelling him in the sweetest fashion. Every time his cock pulses, he gives a tiny, hoarse cry - it’s like an extra jolt riding through him, though slower to return and smaller each time.

They get him sat on the edge of the bed, one hand on a bedpost, and there’s some whispering as he jolts, swaying, whimpering, eyes closed, and then her voice: “Athos?”

“Hmm?”

“May I taste you - um, where his mouth brought you?”

“Mmmh. Y-eah. Ge- _gently_.”

And - _ah!_ \- a tongue laps at him, slow and soft, and it’s exquisite - somewhere _just_ this side of painful. He feels himself surge partway into a slow hardness and grips the blanket, fighting not to, to, something. Every atom of his body feels overloaded with sensation, and, as she gently envelopes him, suddenly it’s too close to what d’Artagnan calls _being overwhelmed_ , and he says: “S-stop. Too. Too m-” but she’s already withdrawn and is kissing his forehead. He can feel a smile.

“Mmmh,” he murmurs. “Kisses.”

He feels her soft mouth on his, leans to it. Then she moves and d’Artagnan’s is there immediately, ah God, the taste. Mmmh. _Jolt_. Fuck.

D’Artagnan stands up, wiping his lips, and says: “What now?”

“I almost feel like we should roll him in a blanket and let him sleep it off,” she says, arms folded. Athos is chuckling - that warm, boozy slur of humour. Every so often he jerks with a small gasp and makes a tiny, inarticulate noise.

D’Artagnan raises his eyebrows. “That’s an option, definitely. Um. Can you… look after him for a little bit? I have to, er…”

“Do whatever it is you need to do…”

He nods, then circles the bed, looking under it. Oh. She points wordlessly and he picks out the china pot and takes it into the next room, closing the door.

Right.

Athos turns out to be biddable, which is useful as she’s sure he outweighs her by a fair amount. She coaxes him fully onto the bed to lie down, head on a pillow, and then folds a corner of counterpane over him, propping herself on her elbow alongside him. He reaches out for her and she finds herself melting into his embrace, which is warm and very tender. They kiss, slowly and gently, for what seems like a fair while, and she has a moment of wondering whether this is allowed, whether they should have checked, and then his palm runs slowly down her back and up again, and she finds herself pressed and moulded to him, mind starting to blank into nothing but the sensations of lips, hand, lightly furred torso, legs, his shoulder and back under her hand, lips, lips, hand.

She feels him stir sleepily against her leg, but doesn’t reach to it, just continues to kiss and stroke - slow and tender. She hears d’Artagnan return, but feels no need to emerge from the cocoon of arms and kisses. He climbs the bed and slides in behind her, winds an arm across, starts to kiss her shoulder and neck; again - gentle, slow.

And this continues for a dreaming, timeless while until they’re all humming - soft, small sounds of pleasure, and the heat building between them is a broad warmth.

Constance turns to d’Artagnan, starts to kiss him, discovers that there’s more fire to summon there when his tongue darts and his hand drops to her breast. They both become breathless in short order, with Athos now kissing her neck and shoulder. D’Artagnan has regained his hardness, and starts to rock against her, thumb rolling her nipple so that sensation crackles across and down her. She flashes back to watching him and Athos grind together, feels Athos’s hand run down her side from breast to hip, and now she’s rocking back against d’Artagnan, arching into Athos’s touch, fingers gripping and scoring at d’Artagnan’s flesh.

Athos has emerged from ecstasy fugue into companionship and content and is now feeling the sparks thickening between his two…

Oh God, yes.

His two lovers.

D’Artagnan slides his tongue deep into Constance’s mouth, and both of them moan at the sensation. She writhes hard against him, hand seizing his rear, and he realises that he wants to taste her again, even if only briefly. He works his way down her body again, kissing, licking, lingering at breast and belly and hips before dipping to kiss her, the scent of her rising into him and blanking all thought but _more_. He slips between her lips and _fuck yes_ , that taste and heat comes to meet him and he tries to get deeper.

Athos shifts, helps Constance turn to her back, holds her as d’Artagnan gently raises her legs, starts to drive deeper into her. She kisses him, moaning, fingers digging into his arm.

“MmmhGod help me, that’s _good_. You’re, _mmh!_ , so. You’re. You’re _both_ so, so, ah, good at… Both… Wait…” Her voice lowers abruptly and her hips still. The men wait, gazing expectantly at her as she raises her head, props her elbows behind her. “Where did you learn how to do that?” she demands, gaze moving between them.

“Er…”

“Well…”

She sees the truth rising in both of them at the same time. “Oh _hell!_ ”

“What?”

“You mean…” her eyes widen in a species of horror. “You mean I’ve essentially been making love to _Milady de Bloody Winter_ this _entire time?!_ ”

“I… wouldn’t think of it like that,” says Athos.

“I’m trying not to,” she replies, somewhat aghast.

They turn to d’Artagnan. “You’re thinking of it like that, aren’t you?” asks Athos.

“Well, I am _now_ …”

Constance’s head thumps back to the pillow. D’Artagnan’s forehead rests more gently on her upper thigh. His shoulders appear to be shaking.

“Are you laughing?”

“Er, maybe a bit.” His head raises. “Oh, come on - it’s funny, when you think ab… um.”

“Right.”

Then Athos leans in and murmurs something in her ear. It goes on for a while. Her expression unfocuses and then sharpens to a wicked grin. “Oh, that’s good,” she says. “I like that.” D’Artagnan feels trepidation creep over him as she whispers back in Athos’s ear. He sits up as it grows when Athos laughs, a full-throated guffaw, eyes sparkling. More whispering, and he’s close enough that it’s impossible not to see her flush, to see his rising desire.

“Er,” says d’Artagnan, and she raises a _wait!_ forefinger. He waits. He nearly says, jovially: “I mean, if you think about it, by the same logic Athos and I have now made love to the Queen,” and thinks better of it, still uneasy.

Then Athos turns his head towards him, says, very seriously: “Do you trust us, d’Artagnan?” while Constance gazes at him soberly.

“Of course.” Of course.

They grin at each other and quirk eyebrows at him almost simultaneously.

“Well then, d’Artagnan,” says Constance, pertly, “here’s how it is. You said that you wanted both of us, so you’re going to have both of us. _But_ ,” she says as he perks up, “you can’t touch us until we say so.”

A rush of heat through him. He’s not sure that they understand exactly how this feels for him. What trust truly means.

“D’Artagnan,” says Athos in That Voice. “Stand by the foot of the bed, hands behind your back. We’ll tell you when to move, and you can ask to be released, but that’s it.”

Heart hammering, he scrambles to stand and wait.

And, it turns out, watch.

Oh _God_.


	12. Touché

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

They lie facing each other, but slightly angled so that his view of them is very clear. They smile at each other, move their heads a little closer, and kiss. One short kiss, still smiling. Then another, slightly longer, her eyes closing. And then, as if at a signal d’Artagnan can’t hear, Athos lifts his head slightly to angle and kiss her deeper while Constance lifts her hand and places it on his flank. D’Artagnan can hear their breath shift at this. Athos raises his hand and runs the back of his fingers lightly down her upper arm. She shivers and grips his side. And all the while they kiss - deeply, frankly.

His hand goes to her jaw and she hums, writhing a little, tensing her arm to bring herself closer to him, then breaking off to kiss his shoulder. D’Artagnan knows the feel of it under his lips - the texture of hard-muscled flesh and two scars - one small, one that must have been spectacular at the time. He sees the hint of tongue as she works her way back towards Athos’s neck and mouth; the tongue whose touch he knows so well.

Athos groans and slides his hand to the back of her head; d’Artagnan can feel the texture of her hair between his own flexing fingers, the heat of her scalp, the scent of her neck as Athos bends to it. And he knows the clutch of Athos’s hands in his own hair, that reined strength.

He shivers, head going back, remembering times when Athos has barely restrained himself, throwing him against walls, pinning him with a brutal kind of tenderness. And then he remembers lifting Constance above himself so that she could bear down on him, skewer him with her soft hand.

His eyes return to the scene at a gravel groan as Constance’s clever fingers play at Athos’s nipple, him gasping and gritting his teeth, his hips starting to rock of their own accord. Her face holds a mixture of fierce delight and a species of awe. Athos’s brows crease upwards in the middle, and then his own fingers come up to Constance’s breast and she gasps in turn, head rolling back. He seizes on this opportunity to fasten on her neck with all the hunger that d’Artagnan knows as well on his own neck as he does the touch of her skin under his own lips. His hand steals to his neck, stroking in a gentle flutter, eyelids stuttering.

Athos’s mouth works its way down to lock on Constance’s straining nipple, and again d’Artagnan experiences that doubling of sensations as he sees the hint of Athos’s tongue lapping around her as she hisses and clutches his arm hard enough to whiten the skin. His knee comes across and she immediately locks her thigh over his and rocks hard against it, moaning in rhythm with her own thrusts. Athos leans his forehead briefly against her chest as if resting, eyes screwed shut, lip bitten and hand a fist behind her as she pants against him.

He knows that look from the inside as well, all too well, remembering the early days of his and Constance’s affair; the restraint, the boiling of his blood, the countless ways they found to…

Ah. Ah, God.

“Oh dear,” says Athos, and d’Artagnan returns to himself to see those sea-coloured eyes peering sardonically at him across Constance’s arm. She says “Hmm?” then moans as he licks the exquisitely sensitive skin of her inner elbow, gently bites the soft flesh of her lower arm. She sounds somewhere between surprise and a deep-plunging arousal.

“Shall I tell her? Ah, no, don’t answer. Hands _behind_ your back, please.”

She looks over as he prises his hand from where he’d been cupping himself, just cupping, just…

Damn.

“Oh _dear_ …” she says with a wicked grin. “Tut-tut. Are we in forfeit territory?”

“Hmm,” he says thoughtfully, licking her nipple, tugging gasps and a renewal of those rocking motions. D’Artagnan whimpers.

She looks over. “Dear God, he’s so _hard_.”

“Mmmh,” and there’s a quaver in that note. “Imagine that,” he says, voice breaking a little. “Imagine that in your… mouth.”

Her brow creases upwards, her jaw dropping a little. “Oh God, yes.” She bites her lip. “Imagine that, rubbing against you, leaving that delicious trail…”

He hisses lightly. “The heat of him.”

“Ah, ah God.”

They kiss, moaning into each other, hands moving blindly over chest and shoulders.

“Sit… sit up…” she gasps.

“Uh. Ah, yes, yes.”

And now they’re much closer, and he swears he can smell their renewed arousal, feel the fever-heat of their skin against his. He clenches his hands hard behind his back, watches them kneel up, kissing frantically, hands wild over each other’s backs and in their hair. Athos, now fully erect, is rubbing against Constance’s belly, and d’Artagnan’s thinking: that could be more comfortable. And he’s thinking: he should go between her legs. And he’s thinking: either way, one tiny shift in angle and I’ll be watching him disappear inside her. 

His knees weaken at the thought, just a little, and he staggers slightly, balance spoiled and breathing heavy. His arms fly out to the sides and he snatches them back behind him, heart hammering, legs spread a little, on parade rest.

The others continue to sway, pant, groan, run their hands over each other, fingers now straying to more sensitive areas in what looks to d’Artagnan like a competition for dominance until they each have a hand cupped under the other, eyes locked, lips bitten, daring and entreating each other in one blazing look.

Constance’s hand rises slowly from under Athos’s balls until her fingers are encircling his shaft, just under the head. All she needs to do is, oh, is tighten into a downward stroke and… He, only a moment behind, changes the angle of his wrist so that his, ah, middle fingers are sliding along her cleft to where he can…

The doubling of sympathetic sensation is back. He knows what it is to be poised, to feel exactly that flesh under his touch. He also, oh God, knows what it’s like to be under those fingers. Somehow hardening even further, he grits his teeth, grinds his feet into the floor to anchor them, grips his left wrist with his right hand, locked behind his back.

Athos flicks his eyebrows, Constance gives a slight nod, and they’re moving together, all the while staring each other down as if looking for an advantage, he sliding slowly into her, she tightening and gliding slowly down.

Their eyes still locked on each other, they continue, inexorable, achingly slow, shifting their knees’ stance to stay upright against what must be great temptation to

Oh fuck, they’re speeding up, and Constance is the first to make a sound. Athos grins grimly and, from the look of his arm muscles, is adding more pressure, but she, Christ, she tugs a moan from him with a swift dip of her fingers to his balls at the end of a stroke, and now that barrier is broken and the room rings with sounds summoned from all three throats.

Athos turns his head towards d’Artagnan while keeping his eyes on Constance. “Who gave you permission to… _unh_ … m-make a sound?”

“Oh,” says Constance, “we’ll… we’ll allow him… this, don’t you think?” She raises her free hand to his shoulder and he echoes her.

“Ah, mind your… manners,” he says, smiling lazily, and d’Artagnan is not entirely sure who he’s addressing, but then Constance’s fingers trail down his chest to twist Athos’s nipple and he’s the first to close his eyes, head thrown back, teeth gritted. He looks back down to see her triumphant grin, lunges forward and kisses it from her. Their hips are pumping hard now and d’Artagnan’s head is swimming, watching their skins flush, their muscles heave, drinking in the scent of them, the sounds of flesh on flesh and moaning, stuttering breaths.

Athos draws a yelp from Constance, teeth nipping her shoulder and she… he can’t see, her head behind his… she is… murmuring something to him. He’s nodding. They’re… reluctantly, _surely_ … slowing…? Yes, braced against each other like wrestlers, they appear to be withdrawing.

“Dear God,” he says, “why did you stop?!”

“Believe me,” says Athos, teeth gritted and colour high, “it wasn’t easy.”

“Also,” says Constance, “you’re in a lot of trouble.”

“May I move?”

“We insist on it,” he says, gravely, and they reach for him, drawing him to the bed. “The exhibition bout is over. Time for the real thing.”


	13. Corps-à-corps

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a different masterclass is delivered - this time on both sword and buckler.

They draw him onto the bed, lay him down in the middle, face-up. Athos is on his left side, Constance on his right. They are both sitting on their haunches and smiling down at him, more fond than wicked, he thinks.

“What happens now?” he asks, eyes flicking between them.

“You get your wish,” says Constance.

“You get to have both of us,” says Athos.

“Or, more accurately…”

“We get to have you.”

His eyes narrow even as he smiles. “What…”

“And we release you,” says Constance hurriedly, eyes on Athos, then moving down to him. Her expression is sober for a moment before smiling again.

“So I may touch you.”

Her dimples deepen. “Yes,” she says.

“That you may,” says Athos.

He reaches up to lay a palm on both of their faces. They reach and lay their respective nearest hands on his chest, nuzzling into his palms.

Then Athos turns his head a little further, rubs his lips over the tip of d’Artagnan’s thumb. A moment later, they’ve parted, his head still moving side to side a little.

Constance looks around at d’Artagnan’s gasp, sees his thumb disappearing into Athos’s mouth, turns her head so that she can take first one then the other of his middle fingers between her lips, closing her teeth gently at the first knuckle so she can strum the tips with her tongue. Half-inch by half-inch she takes them deeper, feeling his pulse pick up a notch. Further down she reaches with her tongue to graze his palm, hears him moan, then moan again. Turning her eyes, she sees Athos mouthing the base of d’Artagnan’s thumb.

Teeth, tongue, lips; he makes love to that one small piece of flesh, eyes closed, totally in the moment, feeling his lover quiver under his touch. He opens his eyes to look down, sees d’Artagnan struggling to keep both of them in view and smiles despite himself, then moves to kiss and nip his wrist. He does feel a brief pang of cold when d’Artagnan’s eyes slip towards Constance, but then he remembers the feel of her under his touch, and the warmth chases out the sensation.

Constance has also moved to his wrist, but he can’t resist any longer, shifts his hands to caress their necks and shoulders, then down to cup and twist.

Ah. He used to be so cautious, and now… Mmmmh…

Oh. Oh God, that shouldn’t feel so good, but it always does.

“Come down,” he says. “Please?”

They drop forward to their hands, either side of him, lean in. To his astonishment they turn and kiss each other, then lean further to both kiss his mouth at the same time. He opens to them, feeling the impossible sensation of two sets of lips, two tongues on his, leans into it, knowing how simultaneously ludicrous and arousing it is, them all gasping and striving. They draw back, smile. He feels like he’ll never stop smiling.

His hands have travelled to their bellies now, and he doesn’t remember doing that, but it’s so nice, so… the different textures… the… he slips lower, cups them, feels them quiver, hears them pant, feels their legs part, muscles strain forward, wanting…

His left hand shifts to grip Athos, his right to tremble at her entrance, promising them both. Promising…

He can feel that strain now, see it in their faces, and

He can’t wait any longer.

Constance shifts her hips forward as he starts to enter her, then rises high on her knees and suddenly he’s deep in her. Oh, oh God, she must be so

“God, you’re so wet.”

“Mmmm-mmhm…”

“Ah!” Athos is grinding into his grip, all notions of constraint, of waiting, evaporated. He lifts his left hand to rest on d’Artagnan’s chest. At this angle, he’s thinking of the last time they… D’Artagnan catches his eye and he can see that thought has blossomed in him too. Groaning, eyes shuttering, he leans hard into his stroke, fingers digging into d’Artagnan’s chest. 

It can’t be long now.

She is quivering at the prelude to the first foothill peak, seeing something pass between the two of them and only feeling the more aroused as her mind starts to try to picture it, remembering that first touch of Athos in her fist a few minutes ago, how much she longed to taste him. Longs.

Oh. Oh, _fuck_. 

He feels her clench around him, sees her arm flail out, to be caught by

Athos, working on pure instinct, catches her hand to steady her. It turns his body slightly, and he sees her quiver, raised up, head back, glorious. He rises up himself, his system giving a great leap at this, and

D’Artagnan squeezes as he is being squeezed. It isn’t entirely voluntary, but he feels Athos harden in his grip, that crucial degree. Oh God. 

Oh God.

Oh God.

He isn’t stopping. Fast learner. Her fingers interweave with Athos’s, and she hears her own voice, singing her impending climax, high and glorious.

Oh. Oh, _God_.

God, he’s

She’s

Oh, he thinks. Oh yes, come, come for me. And then he’s saying it out loud and they both throw their heads back and shout, arcing, losing their strength and balance as Athos spends himself, a warm spill onto d’Artagnan’s upper chest and arm, and Constance squeezes him so hard that her juices jet into his palm.

They fall forward, joined hands landing on his chest, and his heart gives such a leap. Constance goes to cuddle into his side, realises how impossible that is until he withdraws, settles for dipping to kiss his shoulder, then sees Athos doing the same.

Only he’s not kissing - he’s lapping at his own juices on d’Artagnan’s chest and arm, and it should be strange, but it looks natural, and loving, and immensely practical.

“May I?” she asks.

Slightly glazed, he turns to her as d’Artagnan chuckles beneath them. “Of course,” he says, and d’Artagnan withdraws from her while stifling his giggles the best he can.

“Why are you laughing?”

“T-ticklish!” he manages.

Smirking, she bends to the shared task, feeling d’Artagnan wriggle beneath them, sharing wobbly kisses with Athos, and then d’Artagnan, who gasps into aroused sobriety at the taste, then takes the fingers of both hands to his mouth, moaning.

It’s an arresting sight. They try to share, and all end up laughing, Constance and Athos cuddling into d’Artagnan’s sides, woozily kissing and stroking his chest as he says “Shhh, hush, rest…”

“But…” says Constance, sleepily.

“Yes,” says Athos, “you…”

“Hush,” says d’Artagnan again, sounding massively content. “I’ll keep for the moment. Rest.”

So they do.

In the end it’s her bladder that wakes her, a couple of hours later by the level of the candles, and it’s combined with the sudden itch of fear that the door is unlocked. Rising as smoothly as she can, she finds her abandoned shift in the corner and tugs it on, slipping into the other room to deal with both issues. It seems that someone - d’Artagnan - has locked the door, leaving the key in such a position that even someone else with a key would not be able to let themselves in.

Trust a Musketeer, she thinks, smiling in the dark room. Other business finished with, she returns, closing the door to the bedroom as softly as possible. By the glimmer of the remaining candles, she sees that d’Artagnan has not moved, but that Athos is practically lying on his front beside him, arm flung across the younger man’s chest. At some point that she can’t actually remember, they must all have clambered halfway under the bedsheets. She creeps closer, sees d’Artagnan’s eyes glinting in the candlelight, and the hint of a slanting smile across his face. He raises his right hand and puts his finger to his lips.

She frowns a question, sees him nod minisculey to his left. Athos… is muttering to himself… sleep-talking? Her frown turns lop-sided with the sideways tuck of mouth under it. D’Artagnan’s face shrugs. Closer again and she can hear: “Just say it. Just say.” Pause. “I do. I do say. I. I’ll. Oh.” Pause “No good.” Pause. “I do. I do, I do. Easy to say. I.”

They gaze at each other, somewhere between laughter and… something else. Concern, affection, caution…? Later he will remind himself of this moment: yet another in a chain of falling in love all over again. She is, all of a sudden, aware of the incredible fragility of what is building here, and how one wrong step could crack everything. She will look back on this and chide herself for giving so much to fear.

In the meantime, he reaches out with his free hand and she steps willingly to him, reaching out in turn. She lifts her shift enough to place a slow knee on the bed, leans forward, biting down on a giggle, leaning on d’Artagnan’s hand, missing the brimming look he’s giving her.

So far so good - she’s given the bed her full weight, and now all she has to do is lie down… somewhere. Then she is distracted by the sheer power in d’Artagnan’s right arm as he slowly lowers her, feels a warm kind of panic sweep her, culminating in her wanting him, so strongly it’s like a kind of hallucination. She looks at him and, from what she can see of his expression, he’s caught the shift in her breathing; for all she knows, her heartbeat is spelling it out for her.

It wouldn’t be quite true to say that she resents Athos at this moment, but it’s close. If he were awake, it would be another thing, and suddenly she’s thinking of all… well, at least three of the ways he could be involved if he were.

The dilemma is answered a moment later when Athos’s breathing changes and he… doesn’t wake with a flail, as she might have predicted, but with an incredibly focused _stillness_ , an absolute silence in which she assumes he is analysing exactly where he is before reacting to it.

“Hey there,” says d’Artagnan quietly and cheerfully.

“Hey,” says Athos, and his voice is that of someone entirely awake.

“Hello,” she adds, so that he can add that information to his stock.

“Oh,” he says. “That was real.”

“Yes,” she says, and feels a slow flush filling her.

“ _Good_ ,” he says, and they can hear the edge of a smile in that, both letting out a breath they weren’t entirely aware of holding until now.


	14. Glissade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the merits of teamwork are explored, to the benefit of all.

“If you’ll excuse me,” he says, rolling over and to his feet in one movement, “I just need to…”

“Next door.”

“Thank you.”

The door closes and they do nothing for a moment, her propped on his arm still. Then d’Artagnan starts to lower her to the bed next to him again, turning fully to her. Within moments they are kissing, hands to each other’s faces. He is warm from sleep, shivering as her hand trails down his back. She finds that she wants him very badly; in particular, she wants to hear him cry out, feel him release and fall. She lets her hand trail down to the cleft of him, feels all those lean muscles quiver, cups him, squeezing, continues to the place where the top of his thigh just starts, strokes that lightly, feeling him respond, hearing him moan - a high, slightly helpless sound. He writhes a little but has not started to rock; not yet.

She takes his arm from around her waist gently, lifts it to place his hand directly on her breast. He immediately moans again, starts to caress her, lowers his face to nuzzle between them, cupping the one in hand to draw them together a little, and she feels herself swell in response, a small moan escaping her. Through the thin cloth of her shift his tongue finds her, and she lets out another, louder, pulling at him with her hand; in response he pushes his leg between hers.

Suddenly, the bed dips and another pair of hands joins them. Her heart jumps, not entirely pleasantly - she’d completely failed to hear him return! She peers over d’Artagnan’s dipped shoulder, dimly makes out a sardonic expression before he kisses her and she returns it, while d’Artagnan writhes between them.

Athos draws back. “There’s entirely too much cloth between us,” he says, mock-sententiously, and she smirks.

“Let’s remedy that,” she agrees, matching his tone as best she can, slipping back from the bed so that, between them, they can turn back the sheets to expose d’Artagnan, who rolls to his back, squirming pleasurably.

As she makes to climb onto the bed again, Athos shakes his head at her. “Oh Constance,” he says, reproachfully, “after all the effort we went to earlier - now we’re going to have to disrobe you all over again.”

“Well, Monsieur, I can only offer my apologies.”

“You can offer more than that,” he says with a growling edge he’s never directed at her before. She thinks she knows how it would affect d’Artagnan, but right now it makes her grow still, cautious, a little colder - the context is all wrong. He sees this immediately and says: “Will you let me help you, Constance?” with such simplicity that she can only say:

“Yes, please.”

He slips off the bed, pads silently around to her, and she’s reminded, fleetingly, of the tomcat image she had earlier, feels herself growing warm again before he’s even reached her and asks: “May I?”

She nods mutely, feels his hands slide down her sides, thumbs caressing firm, spiral patterns all the way down to her ankles until he starts to slide the hem of the shift up her body, the embroidery stroking a textured pattern this side of rough, all too like the touch of his beard on her skin.

One step behind the thought comes that touch itself, following the hem up her body, sending her heart to thumping, making her breathing loud and shallow. She hears a moan to her left, looks around to see d’Artagnan, eyes bright, propped sideways on his elbow, left hand cupping himself. As she catches his gaze, his drops and his hand begins to move in earnest just as Athos’s lips reach her nub and she’s gasping and rocking into him, one hand lightly on the back of his head. He wraps the front of her shift across her belly so that he can seize her buttocks, bring her more firmly into his mouth, causing her to moan in earnest, widen her stance to keep her balance.

“Come,” she gasps after a few delicious moments of this, “come here,” catching at his shoulders and making as if to lift him. He rises smoothly, lifting the shift with him, still trailing his tongue up her now terribly sensitive skin, pausing to batten on first one breast then the other. Then he’s pressed entirely against her, her arms raised for him to pull the shift over her head, fearlessly vulnerable to him.

Were this d’Artagnan, he would have pinioned her arms, mouthed roughly at neck and breasts, until she was flushed, writhing and moaning against him. Instead, he gently tugs each arm down through the armhole in turn to free them the sooner, while she hums and breathes hard against him, testing his resolve all over again. He aims the garment roughly towards a nearby chair, bends to kiss her as her arms wind around him.

After a moment, she pulls back, smiles up at him and moves to murmur in his ear. He nods, agreeing, lets her pull him towards the bed again.

She straddles d’Artagnan’s chest, effectively pinning him, while he dives to pull his hand away from himself, replacing it with his tongue in a series of broad strokes from balls to tip as d’Artagnan stops twisting as if to escape and instead rocks towards him.

D’Artagnan’s hands come up under her buttocks, lifting her towards his mouth and she complies, shuffling further up so that he can lick and kiss her rather like Athos is licking and kissing him below. Suddenly he is moaning loudly, desperately into her, the vibration arcing across her. She turns her head, then twists her torso, but is unable to quite make out what Athos is doing, even as d’Artagnan’s fingers clutch in her flesh and his mouth attacks her with renewed hunger until she’s rocking hard and crying out, hands clutching at the air.

Determined, she pulls herself off him before he can continue his assault and render her incapable of anything else, turning, determined to see what Athos is up to.

True to his earlier stuttered words, his lips are wrapped around d’Artagnan while his hand strokes him. The other hand is buried somewhere under d’Artagnan. He pulls up off his cock and smiles wickedly, then starts to broadly kiss one side of his head only. She grasps his meaning swiftly, bends to kiss both him and d’Artagnan, while the latter thrashes and thrusts raggedly between them, groaning. Then Athos moves to kiss his way down the shaft to the balls. As she watches, he starts to lap them with a broad tongue. Turning to keep him better in sight, she envelopes d’Artagnan to an accompanying moan, then slowly works her way back and forth, deeper on every pass, as Athos lays his tongue lower and lower.

She frowns slightly, then her eyebrows go high when she works it out. Athos has worked his body back to lay flat on the bed, and now lifts d’Artagnan’s thighs for all the world as though he was a woman… Oh, my God. D’Artagnan bucks under and into her, growing a degree harder, then his flailing hand grips her and, before she can quite prepare herself, a finger slips inside her and she’s moaning onto him, feeling directly how much this arouses him as Athos works his tongue beneath him.

As she pulls back for some air, shifting to hold her weight on one hand so that she can stroke him with the other, Athos looks up. An irresistible thought flashes through his head and he writhes his left shoulder out from under d’Artagnan’s thigh so that he can reach up with his hand to touch her cheek. She nuzzles into it, as he hoped she would. Soon his finger is in her mouth, lapped around by her clever tongue as she bucks back onto… Oh. Oh, God. He loses a couple of moments to grinding into the mattress briefly as he tongues d’Artagnan with renewed vigour, then gently withdraws his finger from her mouth and places it at d’Artagnan’s spit-slick, pulsing entrance.

Before he can say anything, d’Artagnan is calling out “Yes, yes,” pushing at him. He considers teasing, then, smiling, applies the pressure needed to breach his tightness, sliding inside with a gasp of his own. He returns his tongue to the spot, hearing d’Artagnan groan and Constance’s breath catch as he works his way gently deeper.

“Oh, d-dear God,” murmurs Constance, “are… are y-you do-oing what I-I think you’re… _unh!_ doing?”

“If…” he starts.

“Yes, _yes!_ ” pants d’Artagnan. “Yes, he’s in-in _side_ me. Oh, _God_.”

Her eyes widen, then lose focus as either d’Artagnan does something wonderful with his fingers, or the thought goes deep inside her.

Possibly both.

“D’Artagnan,” he calls out, “do you want more…?”

There’s a panting, straining, rustling pause.

“M-maybe,” comes back, and he reflexively meets Constance’s eyes, which widen briefly, deliberately, above the start of a shocked-delighted smile. “If, er, if…”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he says, “I didn’t think to br…”

“No, no, that’s… that’s a-aall right. Um. I brought…”

“You did…?!”

“What…?”

“Do you always…?”

“What?”

“Well… I mean…”

“I wish I’d known…” 

“What,” says Constance, again, loudly and deliberately, “is going on?”

Athos lets a grin spread across him, blinks slowly. “Constance, may I ask for some help? I think you’re in the most advantageous position.”

“Go on…”

He smiles again, a happy man, she can’t help but notice, and there’s a quiver in his voice she can’t quite identify. “Could you please go and find d’Artagnan’s belt pouches - they’re somewhere…” he nods sideways, “around there.”

“All right.”

“In one you’ll find a small bottle. Would you please bring it to me?”

She nods, kisses d’Artagnan’s belly, and, after he’s slowly withdrawn from her, goes in search.

“Um, Athos?”

“Yes, d’Artagnan?”

“Do you? Are you? I mean: are we…?”

“Well, that’s up to you,” he says, slowly, “though, if you were to ask my advice, I’d say: maybe save that for another time…”

“Another…?”

“God, I hope so, don’t you?”

“Oh, God, yes!”

Constance stands by the bed, holds up a familiar bottle, half-full. Her eyes, half-seen in the low glimmer of the remains of the candles, seem to sparkle. “What’s this then?”

“Grapeseed oil.” He gives her a smile that contains seeds of sheer wickedness, and she feels excitement and trepidation shiver through her.

“What’s it for?”

“Lubrication. Will you help me?”

“Of course.” She steps closer, then folds one leg onto the bed next to their conjunction.

“All right. Take the stopper out and pour a couple of drops here.”

“Here?”

“Yes.” He works the finger back and forward a little while d’Artagnan moans lightly, close-mouthed. “Now a couple more on this one, and… would you help distribute… ah, yes, perfect. Thank you.” He cocks an eye up at her, twinkling. “Are you watching?”

“Yes.” She’s a little breathless.

“D’Artagnan?”

“Yes?”

“Are you ready?”

“God, yes.”

“Good.” He slides his middle finger nearly all the way out, then slides the ring finger in with it. D’Artagnan gasps and pushes back towards him.

“God,” she says, “you really like that, don’t you?”

D’Artagnan gives a quivering moan and rocks a little, slowly.

“He really does.”

She looks down. Athos’s face is calm and focused, but the look he throws up to her is anything but, suffused with deep emotions, not all of which she can read. Then he leans forward, raised slightly on his other elbow, and starts to move in d’Artagnan, raising a battery of sounds from him. He adds his tongue to the conjunction, fluttering all around and around the other’s tightening balls. D’Artagnan raises his hips from the bed to thrust hard back, grunting now. Athos cocks another look at her, and this time it’s an invitation.

“God, yes,” she says, scrambling forward, wrapping her mouth around d’Artagnan’s straining shaft. It takes a little while to catch the rhythm right but soon enough he is pistoning between them, and they’re all moaning and rocking together.

Constance can’t help it - she finds herself imagining them doing more than this - d’Artagnan inside her, Athos… God, is that even…? inside _him_ , them all crying out together.

_Focus, focus._

I am!

It was difficult at first to find the right angle - filling and being filled - but, once he’d got it, it… Jesu, it feels like something he could do forever. Except. Oh.

“Oh, oh God, I’m going to… I’m…”

And they. Oh God, they… harder, faster. _Yes._

It feels as though his entire body clenches and releases in one breath, an explosion of pleasure that pulls a great shout from his throat.

Constance and Athos eye each other with a mixture of delight and disbelief. Then Athos’s eyes slide.

“Quickly,” he says, with a slight edge of urgency, “how hard is he?”

She disengages gently to say: “Surprisingly hard, actually.”

Athos nods, thoughtfully. Then catches her gaze again and gives a small, upward nod. “Keep going.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously,” he says, reapplying himself.

Shrugging mentally, she starts to lick him as gently as she had Athos earlier, astonished at the response - a quivering moan and a leaping hardness. Her eyebrows rise and she reaches to lift him to her mouth again. She applies a gentle pressure, lapping him round with her tongue, feels him start to rock again. Then she feels him seize her thighs and pull her across him with no little urgency.

She squeaks, muffled, and Athos looks up, then peers further up. Dear God. And he laughs, feeling incredibly light for a moment. A moment he wants to prolong. Carefully, he withdraws his fingers, laying conciliatory licks on the delicate flesh, twists himself sideways so that he can reach with his right hand to… ah, _fuck_ yes. He’s not going to last long, especially with the sounds the others are making.

He buries his tongue as far into d’Artagnan as he can, reaching up from time to time to tongue his re-tightening balls as Constance rocks, giving muffled, increasingly high-pitched, desperate-sounding moans around d’Artagnan’s cock.

She can feel him swelling again, impossibly, stretching her jaw, all the while tonguing her, burying his face in her and moaning so hard that she can feel it echoing deliciously, vibrating across her. And just as she’s thinking: well, this is _very_ nice… he fumbles and replaces his tongue with a thrust of fingers and she starts to rock back onto him in earnest, crying out on a rising scale.

He can hear Athos grunting, feel the lash of his tongue losing focus - only a little - as his own arousal rises. He can’t last this time, and he’s not going to try, awash in sensation across his entire body, buzzing, whimpering, moaning, and finally shouting the only warning he can manage: “Ah, uh, I, c-uh, ffffu-!” as he is consumed from end to end in a blinding pleasure.

“Mmmmmmmh!” cries Constance, climaxing hard around his fingers as his release pools in her mouth.

“Fuck! Oh, God, fuck, yes!” shouts Athos, his body jackknifing, deliberately twisting again so that he spends himself on his own body rather than the bed. He can hear the others panting, hears, beyond that, the first sleepy notes of a pre-dawn blackbird.


	15. Salute

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we say our farewells. Until another time…

It’s hard to say which of them starts laughing, or whether they begin together, but it echoes through everything they do for the next half-hour - withdrawing, hugging, kissing, clambering down, fetching water and a cloth for Athos, finding all the scattered clothes, kissing, getting d’Artagnan sat up against the head of the bed, kissing, stroking, reliving moments together with a kind of congratulatory gratitude, and finally:

“Constance, I’m sorry, we ha-”

“I know.”

“Mmmh?”

They chuckle. Constance shakes him a little. “Wake up, love.”

“Izwha-hn?”

“Ex _act_ ly.” They snigger.

“You could stay for another hour. It’s not yet dawn.”

“We’d ri-i-i-iisk,” Athos yawns, “being seen.”

“You’ve only had a couple of hours’ sleep.”

“We’ve done more with less, and you’ve had no more sleep than us.”

“Yes, but I can spend the next hour or so dozing instead of riding back to the garrison and then… whatever today brings for me, it won’t involve sharp things. Well, all right, there’s needles, but still…”

He smiles sidelong, and affection beams out at her. “Barring some terrible emergency,” and those last two words are a little dry, “we’re on light duties until we ride to the border to fetch the princess.”

“What pr… oh, yes, for the wedding.”

“Exactly that.”

D’Artagnan lets out a minute snore and they both smirk at each other, shake their heads.

“I could carry him,” says Athos, “but that would definitely provoke attention.”

She buries her head in one hand, belly and shoulders quivering at the image.

“Also,” he says, “I’m not sure how far I could carry him, and people get testy about being _dragged by the foot_ ,” he says loudly in d’Artagnan’s ear.

“Mawake!”

“Mm-hm?”

He scrubs at his face. “No dragging!” he admonishes, cracking open his eyes.

Athos nods gravely. “No dragging,” he promises, “this time.” He slaps the man’s naked chest jovially. “Come on!”

“Ugh!” but he’s shifting, and Constance swings herself out of the way to stand. While Athos was cleaning himself off, she’d laid their clothes at the foot of the bed, and now the men clamber slowly into them. Sat back on the bed, she looks away. Somehow it seems more intrusive than watching them strip each other off. When she looks back, Athos is straightening d’Artagnan’s doublet across his shoulders, and d’Artagnan, his eyelids still half-mast, is brushing Athos’s hair back from his face with his fingertips. This ease of tenderness goes right into her, twisting something until they simultaneously look at her and smile and the smile that calls back to them is lop-sided and whole-hearted.

They walk around to her and Athos, still in his shirtsleeves, makes that soldierly courtesy that is almost a joke between them, especially when, as now, she nods gravely back to him, the faintest smile quivering about her lips as it does his. D’Artagnan simply looks her directly in the eye, right hand to his chest and, when she echoes his gesture, expression full of all the complex joy she is feeling, he brings the other hand up to join the right, pressing hard, eyes closing. When he opens them again, she is unsurprised but still consumed by the fact that they are brimming, feels her own sting.

She slips off the bed to stand, still naked, and they, at once and seemingly spontaneously, go to one knee in front of her together. She reaches her hands down to them and they kiss them. She tugs, tears running freely now, saying: “Get up, you idiots!” They rise and she puts her hands to their cheeks, goes up on tiptoes as they gather her into their arms, kiss the tears away.

She turns and kisses d’Artagnan on the mouth. He smiles against her lips, and she can’t help but smile back, laughing for joy.

She turns to Athos and his eyes are grave and full of a single question before she nods and kisses him. What she feels here is not so much joy as a kind of completeness. What he seems to feel, as she pulls back, is a kind of pleased shock, quickly swallowed by pragmatism.

For a warm moment she leans into their arms around her, then, taking a deep breath, pulls back. Athos nods to her, steps back in turn, seeming to pull more of himself back into that otherwise impenetrable hiding place. D’Artagnan smiles that slanting, copper smile that seems to use his entire body, stays close until she gives him a laughing little push, smiling up into his face saying, swiftly: “I’ll see you soon.”

And he swallows down the ludicrous hurt that had flashed across him all too easily.

Athos says, from the darkness: “I’d better go first, in any case.”

They follow him into the outer room, hands held tightly. He revolves into his doublet and dons his hat, pulling it low over his eyes as if such a figure could be anyone other than Athos.

“Athos,” she says.

“Mmm?” He is standing against the outer door, checking the security of his sword and dagger, seemingly without voluntary thought.

“You said, earlier: ‘another time’…”

“I did?” He looks up at her, face enigmatic in the rising pre-dawn light. Then he smiles. “I did.”

“Well?”

“That’s rather up to you, isn’t it?”

D’Artagnan squeezes her hand.

“I…” she chews her lip briefly, “would like that very much. That is if you… both… would…?”

“Yes!” says d’Artagnan. She nudges him.

Athos’s face breaks into that rare, slanting smile. His eyes close in a long blink on a deep in-breath. “Yes, please,” he murmurs, then his eyes seem to scan along the ceiling, one finger upheld. He seems now to be counting under his breath. Then he nods. “The guard has passed to the far end of the corridor. I’ll go now.” He looks at d’Artagnan. “I’ll meet you at the stables. Soon.” He turns to Constance. “Until another time, Madame.”

She nods, mock-grave again: “Monsieur.”

And he’s gone, almost silently but for the snick of the door, and very swift. Something like fear thumps through her at it, and then she hears d’Artagnan chuckle. She looks up.

He grins at her. “I don’t think I’ll ever match him for quiet movement.” He slants a comical look at her. “I’m faster over distances, though.”

She rolls her eyes over a fond smirk. He bends and kisses her until they’re both breathless.

“I…”

“He’s waiting.”

“Yes.”

“You have to go.”

“I do. But I’ll see you soon…?”

“I’ll think about it,” she says airily, then catches him in another soul-deep kiss before stepping back to be unseen when he opens the door. He waves, steps out, and is gone.

“He’s right,” she murmurs to the room. “He’s a lot less quiet.”

And thanking God for that - and many other things - she takes herself off to bed to drowse for an hour or so.

Soon it would be tomorrow. And, by the look of it, it would be another beautiful day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well now. This is very nearly it. Except for all those little extra one-offs that keep suggesting themselves (I’m looking at you, yes _you_ ). And yes, I’m more than a little sad about this.
> 
> There will be a short delay before _Nevertheless_ kicks off for admin reasons, and either the update schedule or the prose may get a little… _variable_ as my alter-ego will be taking part in [NaPoWriMo/ GloPoWriMo](http://www.napowrimo.net/) again, trying to write a new poem every day of April on top of everything else…
> 
> So all that remains is to thank all of you who have commented, gifted kudos, shouted “THIS IS NOT A TERRIBLE IDEA!” as loudly as you dared, and will hopefully continue to follow this take on the wonderful characters from that TV series we all love.


End file.
